Comparative Environmental Life Cycle Assessment on Corn Starch Plasticization and Co-Plasticization Processes

Aarsha Surendren, Yusra Hasan, Amar K. Mohanty, Bassim Abbassi () and Manjusri Misra ()
Additional contact information
Aarsha Surendren: School of Engineering, Thornbrough Building, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada
Yusra Hasan: School of Engineering, Thornbrough Building, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada
Amar K. Mohanty: School of Engineering, Thornbrough Building, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada
Bassim Abbassi: School of Engineering, Thornbrough Building, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada
Manjusri Misra: School of Engineering, Thornbrough Building, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 17, 1-13

Abstract: Starch has overtaken the bioplastic market in developing thermoplastic starch-based blends and composite systems owing to its biodegradability and sustainability. Thermoplastic starch (TPS) development is mostly a two-stage process involving plasticizing starch and blending plasticized starch with a polymer. Most of the research focuses on improving the properties of the blend system through different methodologies, including various plasticizers and co-plasticizers. However, limited studies have analyzed the environmental effects of plasticizers or co-plasticizers and their processing. Thus, in this research, the environmental impact of starch plasticization processes performed by co-plasticization (glycerol–urea, glycerol–citric acid, and glycerol–succinic anhydride) and by conventional glycerol-based plasticization is compared through life cycle assessment (LCA). The results showed that glycerol–citric acid- and glycerol–succinic anhydride-based co-plasticization had a comparable environmental impact to traditional glycerol-based plasticization. In contrast, the glycerol–urea-based co-plasticization process exhibited the highest effect on the environment. Furthermore, to reduce the environmental impact, a sensitivity analysis of the plasticization processes was conducted by changing the energy aspect of the processes through quantitative and qualitative approaches. The qualitative approach significantly reduced major impact categories such as global warming, carcinogens, ecotoxicity, and fossil fuel depletion.

Keywords: life cycle assessment; plasticization; co-plasticization; environmental sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/17/7406/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/17/7406/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:17:p:7406-:d:1465604

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().