Plastics are synthetic polymers derived from fossil oil and largely resistant to biodegradation. Polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) represent ∼92% of total plastic production. PE is largely utilized in packaging, representing ∼40% of total demand for plastic products with over a trillion plastic bags used every year. Plastic production has increased exponentially in the past 50 years.

Energy harvesting performance of an efficient flexible bio-piezoelectric nanogenerator (BPNG) is demonstrated, where “bio-waste” transparent fish scale (FSC), composed of self-assembled and ordered collagen nano-fibrils, serves as a self-poled piezoelectric active component, exhibiting intrinsic piezoelectric strength of −−5.0 pC/N. The dipolar orientation (∼19%) of the self-polarized FSC collagen is confirmed by the angular dependent near edge X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy.

Polyethylene (PE) is the largest-volume synthetic polymer, and its chemical inertness makes its degradation by lowenergy processes a challenging problem. We report a tandem catalytic cross alkane metathesis method for highly efficient degradation of polyethylenes under mild conditions. With the use of widely available, low-value, short alkanes (for example, petroleum ethers) as cross metathesis partners, different types of polyethylenes with various molecular weights undergo complete conversion into useful liquid fuels and waxes.

The catalytic conversion of waste cooking oil (WCO) with high acid value (120.37 mg KOH/g) to biodiesel has been studied in low-cost SO3H-functionalized quaternary ammonium ionic liquid as catalyst. The ionic liquid (IL) catalyst was efficient in catalysing the simultaneous esterification and transesterification reactions of WCO and methanol.

Original Source

Agro wastes such as carrot peel, onion peel, potato peel and sugar beet peel are products subjected to saccharification process by Penicillium sp. for the hydrolysis, this process was followed by the fermentation using yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae for the production of alcohol which was fermented at 14, 21, 28 days to produce alcohol. The aim of the study was to determine alcohol content of fermented agro wastes based on different fermentation time. The fermented product was purified by primary distillation process at 780C and the fraction was collected.

Food economy plays a major role in world development. A food chain, from an economic point of view, means a long series of interdependent management processes, which have the main goal to providing food to people.