Biobased Material Development

Wan-Ting ChenResearch Biobased Material Development

The Chen Group’s expertise covers the following specific areas:

  • Developing biodegradable mulch films using agricultural wastes.
  • Synthesizing biobased polyol materials using sewage sludge and agricultural wastes.
  • Separating value-added chemical (e.g. fatty acids and nitrogen-containing compounds) from the biocrude oil converted from biowaste and algae.
  • Designing sustainable and biobased flame retardant finishes for textile applications.
  • Building and operating hydrothermal reactors (micro, bench, and pilot scales) to produce biocrude oil and valuable bio-gas from algae, swine manure, food processing wastes, slaughtering waste, newspaper waste, waste plastics, egg waste, and human feces.
  • Characterizing biobased or biodegradable polymers and plastic additives via elemental analysis, GC-MS, py-GCMS, MALDI-MS, TGA, FTIR, SEM/EDS, and surface analysis.

The PERL group was working with The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (CCDC) Soldier Center to produce biodegradable mulch films using soy waste (Feb 2020).

Prof. Chen gave the virtual poster presentation for Sustainable Packaging Symposium SPS, AIChE summer 2020. The online presentation can be found here (note: ACS Membership is needed to access the video). 

Nicholas Farfaras in The PERL Group gave the virtual poster presentation for Sustainable Packaging Symposium SPS, AIChE summer 2020.

The PERL group is working with the HEROES initiative and the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (CCDC) Soldier Center to develop sustainable flame retardant finishes for textile materials.