Analytical and computational techniques for exogenous depolymerization of xenobiotic polymers
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Updated: Aug 21, 2026

Depolymerizable Olefinic Polymers Based on Fused-Ring Cyclooctene Monomers
Published on: December 16, 2022
Masaji Watanabe1, Fusako Kawai, Masaru Shibata
1Faculty of Environmental Science and Technology, Okayama University, 1-1 Naka 3-chome, Tsushima, Okayama 700-8530, Japan. watanabe@ems.okayama-u.ac.jp
Abstract:
We analyze a mathematical model for exogenous depolymerization of xenobiotic polymers. We derive a sufficient condition for the solvability of its inverse problem to determine degradation rates. We also introduce a numerical technique to solve the inverse problem with an example to show how our numerical technique is applied to gel permeation chromatography data of polyethylene wax obtained before and after three-week cultivation of a fungus Aspergillus sp. AK-3. In addition, we present a numerical result which we obtained by applying the degradation rate based on the three week cultivation to simulate the transition of the weight distribution after cultivation of the fungus for five weeks.
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