lntwo

Burgeoning Bioplastics: Metabolix's Breakthrough

My understanding is that they clone in the genes required for PHA production. These genes utilize the plant's carbohydrate production to produce the plastics, giving MBLX an edge over other non-petroleum plastics. That is, the potential to be independent of food carb's as well as the ability to clone in these genes to potential biofuel producing plants.

Long MBLX


On Jun 07 02:49 PM frflyer wrote:

> solar jim is right.
>
> MBLX, with their PHA, is on the cutting edge of bioplastics. Their
> process has far fewer steps than those for producing PLA, which requires
> several fermentation steps and needs to be heated to about 150 F
> to be compostable. Metabolix uses genetically engineered bacteria
> to digest plant sugars and starch, producing PHA plastic that is
> simply harvested.
> They have another technology that infuses the bacteria into the germinal
> stage of switchgrass plants, which then grow with the plastic already
> in the leaves and stems.
> Their new plant in Iowa will use corn as the feedstock, but they
> expect to use swithgrass in the future.