{"id":18394,"date":"2016-03-10T13:00:28","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T13:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/research\/researchers-create-renewable-plastic-from-carbon-dioxide-and-biomass\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T11:56:48","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T06:26:48","slug":"researchers-create-renewable-plastic-from-carbon-dioxide-and-biomass","status":"publish","type":"research","link":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/researchers-create-renewable-plastic-from-carbon-dioxide-and-biomass","title":{"rendered":"Researchers create renewable plastic from carbon dioxide and biomass"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Researchers at Stanford University have discovered a new method of creating plastic using carbon dioxide and inedible biomass. Currently, plastic is made from a polymer called polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which has components derived from refined petroleum and natural gas. As a result, producing PET contributes heavily to global warming. According to Matthew Kanan, an assistant professor of chemistry at Stanford, manufacturing PET \u201cgenerates more than four tons of CO<sub>2<\/sub>\u00a0for every ton of PET that&#8217;s produced.\u201d Therefore, Kanan and his team developed a green alternative to plastic called polyethylene furandicarboxylate (PEF), which is a product of ethylene glycol and a compound called 2-5-Furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA). They were successful in producing FDCA by combining carbonate with carbon dioxide\u00a0and furoic acid, which is a compound made from agricultural waste. An added advantage of renewable plastic is that the carbon dioxide in the PEF products can be converted to its atmospheric state, which can be absorbed back by plants. While this environment friendly plastic is a promising product, the researchers are yet unsure if it would be possible to produce it on an industrial scale.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Read more in <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2016\/03\/160309135712.htm\">Science Daily<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":33313,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"new_tags":[],"series":[],"subject":[2877],"class_list":["post-18394","research","type-research","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","subject-chemistryandmaterialsscience"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Researchers create renewable plastic from carbon dioxide and biomass | Editage Insights<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Researchers at Stanford University have discovered a new method of creating plastic using carbon dioxide and inedible biomass. According to Matthew Kanan, an assistant professor of chemistry at Stanford, manufacturing PET \u201cgenerates more than four tons of CO2\u00a0for every ton of PET that&#039;s produced.\u201d Therefore, Kanan and his team developed a green alternative to plastic called polyethylene furandicarboxylate (PEF), which is a product of ethylene glycol and a compound called 2-5-Furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA). Read more about their research here.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/researchers-create-renewable-plastic-from-carbon-dioxide-and-biomass\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Researchers create renewable plastic from carbon dioxide and biomass | Editage Insights\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Researchers at Stanford University have discovered a new method of creating plastic using carbon dioxide and inedible biomass. According to Matthew Kanan, an assistant professor of chemistry at Stanford, manufacturing PET \u201cgenerates more than four tons of CO2\u00a0for every ton of PET that&#039;s produced.\u201d Therefore, Kanan and his team developed a green alternative to plastic called polyethylene furandicarboxylate (PEF), which is a product of ethylene glycol and a compound called 2-5-Furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA). 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According to Matthew Kanan, an assistant professor of chemistry at Stanford, manufacturing PET \u201cgenerates more than four tons of CO2\u00a0for every ton of PET that's produced.\u201d Therefore, Kanan and his team developed a green alternative to plastic called polyethylene furandicarboxylate (PEF), which is a product of ethylene glycol and a compound called 2-5-Furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA). 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According to Matthew Kanan, an assistant professor of chemistry at Stanford, manufacturing PET \u201cgenerates more than four tons of CO2\u00a0for every ton of PET that's produced.\u201d Therefore, Kanan and his team developed a green alternative to plastic called polyethylene furandicarboxylate (PEF), which is a product of ethylene glycol and a compound called 2-5-Furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA). 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According to Matthew Kanan, an assistant professor of chemistry at Stanford, manufacturing PET \u201cgenerates more than four tons of CO2\u00a0for every ton of PET that's produced.\u201d Therefore, Kanan and his team developed a green alternative to plastic called polyethylene furandicarboxylate (PEF), which is a product of ethylene glycol and a compound called 2-5-Furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA). 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