Su Hyun Kim, Yebin Han, Gaeun Lim, Jeong Chan Joo, Shashi Kant Bhatia, Jungoh Ahn, Woo-Young Jeon, Hee Taek Kim, Yung-Hun Yang
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
To monitor the degradation of bioplastics by microbes and enzymes, conventional weight-based and chromatography-based methods have been commonly used. However, these approaches require time-consuming sample preparation and often suffer from low reproducibility from different recovery method. As an alternative, this study proposes a quantitative approach using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), a technique traditionally used to analyze the thermal properties of polymers. This method directly applies lyophilization without washing and drying samples and uses DSC analysis to quantify the enthalpy change (ΔH) at the melting temperature of bioplastic residues. When PHB films were analyzed after optimizations, a strong linear correlation (R2 > 0.99) between ΔH and film mass was observed across all cases. Compared to conventional, the DSC method showed less than 3.5% deviation from the gas chromatography (GC) method, contrary to the weight-based method showing more than 14% difference from the GC-based method. This method expands the ability to quantify different types of bioplastics such as poly(butylene succinate) (PBS) and polycaprolactone (PCL), simultaneously. This research highlights DSC as a simple, reproducible, and broadly applicable approach for monitoring bioplastic degradation quantitatively, offering a promising alternative to labor-intensive conventional methods.
期刊介绍:
The Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering provides a global forum for the dissemination of research in chemical engineering. The Journal publishes significant research results obtained in the Asia-Pacific region, and simultaneously introduces recent technical progress made in other areas of the world to this region. Submitted research papers must be of potential industrial significance and specifically concerned with chemical engineering. The editors will give preference to papers having a clearly stated practical scope and applicability in the areas of chemical engineering, and to those where new theoretical concepts are supported by new experimental details. The Journal also regularly publishes featured reviews on emerging and industrially important subjects of chemical engineering as well as selected papers presented at international conferences on the subjects.