Arthurson, Veronica
- Department of Molecular Sciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Abstract
The kinetics of abiotic oxidation in the dark and the kinetics of biological mineralization in soil and in a compost environment of thermally oxidized LDPE were studied. It was demonstrated that different activation energies are obtained for the thermal oxidation, depending on the composition of the materials. Significantly higher levels of biodegradability have been obtained in a soil environment at 23 degrees C compared with the compost environment at 58 degrees C. After two years of mineralization, 91% conversion to carbon dioxide was obtained in the soil test, compared with 43% in the compost test. The differences between fungal, archaeal and bacterial community structures in soil and compost after 607 days of biodegradability assay were mapped out. It was found that the most dominant bacterial and fungal terminal restriction fragments (TRFs) in the compost containing the test material are significantly different from the TRFs in the other environments. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords
Degradable polyethylene; Accelerated aging; Biodegradation; PCR (polymerase chain reaction); TRF (terminal restriction fragments); T-RFLP (terminal-restriction fragment length polymorphism)
Published in
Polymer Degradation and Stability
2011, volume: 96, number: 5, pages: 919-928
Publisher: ELSEVIER SCI LTD
SLU Authors
UKÄ Subject classification
Microbiology
Polymer Chemistry
Textile, Rubber and Polymeric Materials
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polymdegradstab.2011.01.031
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/57820