Sustainable Bioplastic Made from Biomass DNA and Ionomers

Plastics play important roles in modern life and currently the development of plastic recycling is highly demanding and challenging. To relieve this dilemma, one option is to develop new sustainable bioplastics that are compatible with the environment over the whole material life cycle. We report a sustainable bioplastic made from natural DNA and biomass-derived ionomers, termed as DNA plastics. The sustainability involves all aspects of the production, use, and end-of-life options of DNA plastics: (1) the raw materials are derived from biorenewable resources; (2) the water-processable strategy is environmentally friendly, not involving high-energy consumption, the use of organic solvents, and the production of byproducts; (3) recyclable and nondestructive use is achieved to significantly prolong the service lifetime of the plastics; and (4) the disposal of waste plastics follows two green routes including the recycling of waste plastics and enzyme-triggered controllable degradation under mild conditions. Besides, DNA plastics can be "aqua-welded" to form arbitrary designed products such as a plastic cup. This work provides a solution to transform biobased hydrogel to bioplastic and demonstrates the closed-loop recycling of DNA plastics, which will advance the development of sustainable materials.

Reaction mechanism of antibiotic bacteria residues as a green reductant for highly efficient recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries

In this study, antibiotic bacteria residues (ABRs) is proposed as a novel green reducing agent and it is found that the reducing agent can realize the efficient recovery of the valuable metals in spent cathode powder (SCP), reduce the environmental pollution and realize the high-value utilization of the biomass waste. The leaching efficiency of Ni, Co, Mn and Li can reach 99.57%, 98.50%, 98.99% and 99.90% respectively under the optimal conditions of 3 mol L^-1 H₂SO₄, mass ratio of ABRs to SCP of 0.8:1, liquid/solid ratio of 30:1 mL g^-1, the temperature of 363 K and time of 2.5 h. Leaching kinetics results shows that the reaction process is controlled by the chemical reaction with apparent activation energy exceeding than 40 kJ/mol. More importantly, the detailed ABRs leaching mechanism is proposed that the metabolite of CaC₂O₄ and reducing sugar in ABRs provide a synergistic reduction effect on the recovery of valuable metals. Furthermore, acid leaching residue can be regenerated to obtain lithium-ion anode materials with excellent electrochemical properties. The entire process is a sustainable green recycling strategy by using waste ABRs waste to treat spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), recovering valuable metals efficiently and minimizing environmental pollution.