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An Empirical Model for Predicting Biodegradation Profiles of Glycopolymers
Summary
Researchers developed a mathematical model to predict how glycopolymers — a type of biodegradable plastic — degrade over time under different conditions. Reliable biodegradation models help evaluate whether alternative plastics truly break down quickly enough to avoid contributing to long-term microplastic pollution.
Pollution caused by plastic materials has a great impact on the environment. The biodegradation process is a good treatment solution for common polymers and biodegradation susceptible ones. The present work introduces new insight into the biodegradation process from a mathematical point of view, as it envisions a new empirical model for this complex process. The model is an exponential function with two different time constants and a time delay, which follows the weight loss profile of the polymer during the biodegradation process. Moreover, this function can be generated as the output variable of a dynamic exogenous system described through state equations. The newly developed models displayed a good fit against the experimental data, as shown by statistical indicators. In addition, the new empirical model was compared to kinetics models available in the literature and the correlation coefficients were closest to 1 for the new empirical model in all discussed cases. The mathematical operations were performed in the MATLAB Simulink environment.
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