Accelerated polyurethane degradation via solvent-based cutinase embedment

Materials Today Communications, vol. 52, pp. 115055

Abstract

Polyurethanes (PUs) are a highly versatile class of synthetic polymers with broad industrial applications as foams, coatings, and adhesives. PUs are known for their resistance against biodegradation and are usually designed for long-term usage. Particularly in application areas such as agriculture and forestry, in which products cannot be collected after use, biodegradability becomes key to avoid environmental pollution. This study reports on the successful embedment of active cutinases into thermoplastic PU (TPU) by a solvent-based approach to accelerate TPU degradation at ambient conditions (37 °C). Embedded cutinases efficiently degrade TPU as determined by the release of the degradation product adipic acid and cutinase activity was confirmed by weight loss of cutinase-containing TPU films. In absence of a cutinase no monomer release was detected over the whole incubation period of 21 days. Embedded cutinases accelerate TPU degradation by up to 1.6-fold over externally supplemented cutinases; this highlights the superior degradation performance of embedded cutinases. Of the five cutinases investigated, two had been previously deemed unsuitable for heat-based embedment. Remarkably, these two cutinases retained nearly one third of the TPU degradation activity of the best-performing cutinase (HiC) after solvent-based embedding. In essence, these results show that solvent-embedment expands the potential use of cutinases in PU degradation and represents a complementation of heat-based extrusion processes.

Authors 6

1. Daniela Esther Knopp

   Covestro (Germany)

   Affiliation as printed

   Covestro Deutschland AG, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Allee 60, 51373 Leverkusen, Germany

2. Simone Göbbels

   Covestro (Germany)

   Affiliation as printed

   Covestro Deutschland AG, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Allee 60, 51373 Leverkusen, Germany

3. Michael Kessler

   Covestro (Germany)

   Affiliation as printed

   Covestro Deutschland AG, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Allee 60, 51373 Leverkusen, Germany

4. Gernot Jäger

   Covestro (Germany)

   Affiliation as printed

   Covestro Deutschland AG, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Allee 60, 51373 Leverkusen, Germany

5. Ulrich Schwaneberg corresponding Aachen Institute of Biotechnology

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Biotechnology, RWTH Aachen University, Worringerweg 3, 52074 Aachen, Germany

6. Lukas Reisky corresponding

   Covestro (Germany)

   Affiliation as printed

   Covestro Deutschland AG, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Allee 60, 51373 Leverkusen, Germany