[Plastic] Develop a new type of biodegradable polyurethane foam material from wheat straw

Approximately 734 million tons of wheat stalks are produced globally every year, which is a large amount of low-cost waste and has no clear use so far.

This plastic material, also known as rubber foam, is usually made from petroleum by-products.

The new paper was published in the "Polymer" magazine, and the Chile Advanced Polymer Research Center (CIPA) also participated in finding new uses for this wheat waste.

So far, castor oil has been one of the main candidates in the R&D race to obtain sustainable polyurethane foam that does not require petroleum.

For this reason, new research proposes to replace wheat straw with 50% of this castor oil, which provides very similar properties to those produced by traditional manufacturing processes using non-renewable compounds.

Use in plant nurseries

Although these new polyurethane foams can have unlimited applications and can even be made from other types of biomass, the research team will use them in plant nurseries to help plants grow in the second phase of the research.

(Keyword: Polyurethane)