Making Corn-based Plastics More Heat Tolerant

(Agricultural Research Service, USDA)

Petroleum is not only the main source of transportation fuel but also a key raw material in making plastics. A team from Lapol LLC, of Santa Barbara, California and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of USDA are working on a solution to make corn-based plastics a better alternative than plastics made from oil.

An important property of plastics is the ability to withstand high temperatures. Corn-based plastics are made by fermenting corn sugar to produce lactic acid. The lactic acid is then further polymerized into polylactic acid, or PLA, a bioplastic. Since 2007, the Lapol/ARS team is developing a product known as a heat-deflection temperature modifier blended with PLA to make it more heat-tolerant.

The heat-deflection temperature modifier is more than 90 percent corn-based and is fully biodegradable. However, there currently are no commercially available heat-deflection temperature modifiers for PLA. ARS and Lapol are seeking a patent for this invention.