What is it about?
This paper reports the preparation of starch-based super-absorbents for slow-release of the fertilizer, urea, using a facile method of reactive mixing which highly practically meaningful and cost-effective.
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Why is it important?
This work has demonstrated the effect of reactive processing as a new and facile way for tailoring the microstructure and properties of starch-based super-absorbent polymer, and its fertilizer release performance. This understanding from this work could be instrumental to developing various release systems based on natural biopolymers and reactive processing.
Perspectives
The methods reported in the literature for similar purposes were more complicated and much less cost-effective. For example, reactive extrusion (REX) for starch modification a highly complex process bringing difficulties in accurately manipulating the chemical reaction and the characteristics of the final products. Moreover, the equipment investment for REX is relatively high, which cannot be afforded by especially many SMEs. In this paper, we demonstrate that using a much simpler device, mixer, might be an alternative option for many SMEs for cost-effective producing chemically-modified plastics for various applications.
Dr Fengwei (David) Xie
Newcastle University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: One-step method to prepare starch-based superabsorbent polymer for slow release of fertilizer, Chemical Engineering Journal, February 2017, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.cej.2016.10.101.
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