Zihan Zhang

Project Title: Degradation of biodegradable plastics and their environmental impacts

Plastics play important role in our daily life and a large number of plastics are produced every year. But due to their threat to the ecosystem, conventional plastics can no longer meet the requirements of sustainable development, and it is a new development direction for replacement with degradable plastics. However, the effects of biodegradable plastics and microplastics they produce on the soil environment have not been well studied.

This project aims to explore the fate and transportation of microplastics and additives from biodegradable plastics, and how they could affect the soil environment. The two most widely used biodegradable plastics (PLA and PBAT) and a kind of conventional plastic (PE) will be selected for the project

The investigative techniques involve FT-IR, and RAMAN for the determination of microplastics and GC-MS, ICP-MS, and HPLC for the determination of additives.

Supervisor: Dr. Liwen Xiao