Chitoboo

Inspiration

We have grown worried about the growing amounts of microplastics and particulates that have been showing up in our cities, homes and food, and of the pollution that's crowding our rivers and seas, so we decided to use our collective strengths- chemistry and biology, to produce an idea worth fighting for.

What it does

Our research is based on 2 independent schools of study, one in the preparation of chitosan, a workable and flexible plastic made of chitin, which is harvested from fungi, and second of the production of PHB(polyhydroxybutyrate), a stiff bio-based polymer, from algae. Only a handful of studies have attempted to bridge the gap, but the preliminary results are promising- by combining the two substituents, forming a copolymer, their individual shortcomings are virtually eliminated. It combines the strengths of preexisting bio-plastics and traditional petro-chemical polymers, by being strong, workable and reliable, while ultimately biodegradable.

How we'll build it

The process is relatively simple, our plan currently is to outsource the gathering of materials by cooperating with an assortment of companies to make use of existing infrastructure. We could then process the algae and funghi into our plastic, which could then be sold as is or handed off to processing plants to be turned into containers, films, packaging etc.

Challenges we ran into

The number one problem for any bio-plastic will always and forever be cost, it will be difficult to market a product that is more expensive than the egregiously inexpensive plastics of today, yet we hope to optimize our production process with time to become competitive economically.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We came up with many advancements, that could make the cost of production much lower and that would encourage domestic market growth, for example using chitin from waste mycelium. We also came up with an idea that all of our team agreed would be greener, and are pushing forward the agenda of polysaccharide plastics, which may well become the PS(polystyrene) and PET(polyethyleneterepthalate) of the next generation.

What we learned

We've delved into promising new fields such as polysaccharide chemistry and done, in our opinion, a good job of bridging our team's respective fields.

What's next for Chitoboo

Much groundwork and hands-on research is what's in the future of this idea.

The science

Here will be a summary of all the research regarding production and processing.

Chitosan

Our main innovation in this chapter is the use of waste mycelium from mushroom farms, which can contain up to 50% chitin by weight. Current research protocol for chitin extraction is as follows: Mechanically separate the medium and mycelium, obtained mycelium is dried, pulverized, then it is deproteinized in a solution of NaOH and finally phase separated by centrifuge. These steps have not been optimized or adapted for manufacture, it is here where our further work will provide these optimisations. As a byproduct of these processes, biowaste which contains a lot of nutrients and minerals will be produced. These can be sold as agricultural fertilizer or mushroom substrate in order to further decrease the cost of the final product.

Further the chitin is converted into chitosan through alkali-based deacetylation and then precipitated with use of an acid. If this is the case, we can combine the first step of this procedure with the last of the chitin procedure to decrease total steps, thus saving time and money.

Reference on chitin extraction

Reference on chitosan synthesis

PHB

Our initial idea was to collect the algae ourselves from water bodies or growing it in bioreactors, but both of these options require immense initial investment, so we found a greener option, by cooperating certain sea-life activist and sea-clean up companies, we could use the harmful algae that grows in the Baltic sea as our ingredient and PHB source. In the below mentioned research paper the whole production process is outlined, essentially the algae is dried, suspended in water, acidified, then the solubles are extracted with solvents and these steps are repeated in sulfuric acid. Again, these steps can easily be optimized and a nutrient rich byproduct from algae cells will be produced, which, when sold, can further reduce the cost of our product.

Reference for algal PHB

Chitoboo production

The final step is a relatively unresearched, yet the paper below has outlined a relatively green and sustainable procedure for the synthesis of a PHB/Chitosan blend/copolymer.

Reference for PHB/CS blend