Call for Partners | Polysaccharide based resins and ingredients with improved end-of-life options

Fossil based synthetic polymers are being used in a large variety of applications including solvent and waterborne products, like coatings, adhesives, sealants, elastomers (CASE), agro chemicals, paper coatings, and home and personal care (HPC) formulations.

The popularity of these polymers can be explained by their excellent performance in a wide range of applications. Apart from being fossil based, a major drawback of many of these existing materials is their (total) lack of (bio)degradability. As a consequence, many of these products are very persistent and accumulate in the environment after disposal or during usage due to e.g. abrasion(coatings). Intrinsically biodegradable (modified) natural polymers like cellulose, starch or pectins offer the potential to be used as biobased functional alternatives. However, these natural polymers often require extensive and irreversible modification to achieve sufficient technical performance in demanding applications, thereby significantly reducing the inherent biodegradability of these biobased products. This is problematic, as most of these products finally end up in the environment via wastewater.

Using various biopolymer based (e.g. starch, cellulose, inulin or pectin) scaffolds with a suitable average molecular weight, we will develop new, green and reversible modification methods. This will induce the desired hydrophobic and hydrophilic balance (depending on intended application) and co-introduce reactive groups for further specific modification. We will explore solventless processes e.g. reactive extrusion to obtain these (reactive) intermediates and final products. The reactive groups can act as an entry point for reversible cross-linking to induce e.g. film forming properties for waterdispersable polymers, or higher viscosity (at lower loadings) for water soluble polymers.