Soil Biodegradability of Polyacetals Prepared in an Industrially Feasible Process: A Case Study Highlighting Today's...

The development of more sustainable material solutions is one of the key challenges today. The biodegradability of a material may support a positive environmental risk assessment. While the relationship between the structure and application property has been worked out in the chemical industry since decades and constitutes important intellectual property for the individual company, between the structure and biodegradation it is still in its infancy. This manuscript highlights a representative example of the challenge in current R&D activities in the industry striving, on the one hand, to introduce biodegradability in polymers while, on the other hand, to prepare such polymers in an industrially feasible manner. The soil biodegradability of polyacetals prepared via the cationic copolymerization of vinyl ethers and aldehydes was investigated. The copolymers were prepared using a newly designed industrially feasible process. By choosing an appropriate vinyl ether and aldehyde from the available monomer toolbox, copolymer properties and their (bio)degradation products can be tuned. The best copolymer in terms of biodegradation proved to be an alternating copolymer made of isobutyl vinyl ether and the renewable raw material furfural with a soil biodegradability of 55% after 550 days in DIN EN ISO 17556. The materials are of interest for agricultural applications.