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Synthesis of Poly(Lactic Acid) from Ammonium Lactate Fermentation Broth of Food Waste

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Abstract

In this study, ammonium lactate from food waste fermentation broth was used as raw material to synthesize butyl lactate with butanol catalyzed by SnCl2-modified cation exchange resin (Sn-CER) followed by direct synthesis of lactide and final polymerization to obtain poly(lactic acid) (PLA). A new Lewis acidic center was formed in the Sn-CER by complexation reaction and the maximum loading of Sn was 31%. The Lewis acid center was converted to the Bronsted acid center by combining with water during the catalytic process, which facilitated the deammoniation and esterification reactions. The conversion yield of butyl lactate reached 87.7% at an esterification time of 6 h, an alcohol/ammonium lactate molar ratio of 3:1, an initial concentration of 30 wt% of ammonium lactate and a catalyst loading of 1.5 wt%. The synthesized butyl lactide was converted into lactide in the presence of stannous octanoate, and the yield reached 61.6% under optimal conditions (polymerization temperature of 160 °C, polymerization time of 7 h, and catalyst loading of 1.0 wt%). PLA with a molecular weight of 8.05 × 104 was synthesized by the polymerization reaction of lactide at 160 °C for 5 h. Therefore, it is feasible to synthesize PLA from food waste, which is an effective way to resource the waste.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during this study are not publicly available, due to the fact that subsequent related research is still ongoing, but are available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Funding

The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant NO. 51978047 & 5217100753) and the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant NO. 2019YFC1906302 & 2019YFC1906304).

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  1. Bingxin Zhang and Yan Guo contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, School of Energy and Environmental Engineering, Key Laboratory On Resource-Oriented Treatment of Industrial Pollutants, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Haidian District, 30 Xueyuan Road, BeijingBeijing, 100083, China

    Bingxin Zhang, Yan Guo, Ming Gao, Chuanfu Wu, Xiaona Wang & Qunhui Wang

  2. Beijing Agro-Biotechnology Research Center, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, Beijing, 100097, China

    Xiaohong Sun

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  1. Bingxin Zhang
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Bingxin Zhang, Yan Guo and Ming Gao. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Bingxin Zhang and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Zhang, B., Guo, Y., Gao, M. et al. Synthesis of Poly(Lactic Acid) from Ammonium Lactate Fermentation Broth of Food Waste. Waste Biomass Valor (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12649-024-02422-6

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