Preparation and Characterization of Microalgae Styrene-Butadiene Composites Using Chlorella vulgaris and Arthrospira platensis Biomass

Abstract

The food industry is a high consumer of polymer packing materials, sealing materials, and engineering components used in production equipment. Biobased polymer composites used in the food industry are obtained by incorporating different biogenic materials into the structure of a base polymer matrix. Renewable resources such as microalgae, bacteria, and plants may be used as biogenic materials for this purpose. Photoautotrophic microalgae are valuable microorganisms that are able to harvest sunlight energy and capture CO2 into biomass. They are characterized by their metabolic adaptability to environmental conditions, higher photosynthetic efficiency than terrestrial plants, and natural macromolecules and pigments. The flexibility of microalgae to grow in either low-nutrient or nutrient-rich environments (including wastewater) has led to the attention for their use in various biotechnological applications. Carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids are the main three classes of macromolecular compounds contained in microalgal biomass. The content in each of these components depends on their growth conditions. In general, proteins represent 40–70% of microalgae dry biomass, followed by carbohydrates (10–30%) and lipids (5–20%). A distinctive feature of microalgae cells is the presence of light-harvesting compounds such as photosynthetic pigments carotenoids, chlorophylls, and phycobilins, which are also receiving growing interest for applications in various industrial fields. The study comparatively reports on polymer composites obtained with biomass made of two species of green microalgae: Chlorella vulgaris and filamentous, gram-negative cyanobacterium Arthrospira. Experiments were conducted to reach an incorporation ratio of the biogenic material into the matrix in the 5–30% range, and the resulting materials were characterized by their mechanical and physicochemical properties.

Biodegradation Study of Styrene–Butadiene Composites with Incorporated Arthrospira platensis Biomass

“…The composition choice for the studied polymer composites, as well as the preparation procedure, was recently reported by the authors [16]. Thus, the mass % composition for the base polymer mixture employed was 25% linear SBS copolymer (with 30% styrene and 70% butadiene, LCY Grit Corporation, Taiwan), 50% branched SBS copolymer (with 40% styrene and 60% butadiene, LCY Grit Corporation, Kaohsiung City, Taiwan), and 25% paraffin oil (Apar Ltd., Mumbai, India).…”

“…There are specific terms associated with the source of each of these items, which can help define and categorize organisms based on their metabolic strategies [15]. The approach to enhance the biodegradability of a polymer composite is to incorporate biomass that contains proteins and polysaccharides [16]. These organic components can serve as nutrients for microorganisms, facilitating their growth and metabolic activity.…”