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Abiotic degradation of PBAT and LDPE: quantification of generated products by carbon assessment
Summary
Researchers exposed industrial PBAT and LDPE plastic beads to UV radiation and water agitation to generate microplastics, nanoplastics, soluble compounds, and volatile products, then quantified all degradation products using total organic carbon analysis coupled with elemental analysis for a comprehensive carbon budget assessment. They found that PBAT degraded very differently from LDPE under abiotic conditions, with LDPE producing significantly more microplastics while PBAT's complete environmental behavior remains incompletely described despite its efficiency in industrial composting.
Plastics are omnipresent in the environment, accumulating under the form of microplastic (MP) or nanoplastic (NP) fragments, soluble molecules and volatile compounds. To understand the scope of such pollution, studies are being performed to characterize the degradation products of plastics, qualitatively and quantitatively. Even if some degradation products have already been studied using carbon as a marker, to the best of our knowledge, no complete quantification of all the degradation products has been carried out. This study was conducted on industrial plastic beads of PBAT and LDPE exposed to UV and stirred in water causing delamination, abrasion and subsequent production of MPs, NPs and solubles. The results will be presented and compared, LDPE being one of the most produced conventional plastics and being replaced by PBAT in some applications. Biodegradability of PBAT proved to be efficient in industrial compost, but its complete behaviour in the environment isn't fully described yet. The total organic carbon method has been used to quantify nanoplastics and solubles compounds. It has been coupled with elemental analysis to perform the total carbon assessment of all the degradation products. Thanks to this new protocol, a comprehensive comparison of the abiotic degradation of the two polymers was obtained, in which PBAT appeared to degrade very differently from LDPE under the tested conditions. LDPE showed significative microplastics' production (up to 7 Also see: https://micro2024.sciencesconf.org/559329/document