Assessing the Biodegradability of 2‐Methylene‐1,3‐Dioxepane ( <scp>MDO</scp> )‐Based Multicomponent Polymers Under Aerobic Composting Conditions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT The increasing accumulation of plastic waste in the environment has spurred the development of compostable polymers. Butyl acrylate/vinyl acetate (BA/VAc) copolymer formulations incorporating varying amounts of 2‐methylene‐1,3‐dioxepane (MDO) monomer are subjected to a 60‐day composting process, with their biodegradation monitored via CO 2 emissions. The MDO is added to the formulation to provide ester bonds in the polymer backbone to promote their hydrolysis and facilitate the breakdown of the polymer into smaller fragments. A lab‐made composting setup based on the ASTM D5338 standard is used to provide continuous monitoring of environmental conditions and CO 2 emissions to track biodegradation. The highest 60‐day biodegradation observed is 12.49% for a sample containing ~9 mol% MDO. This contrasted with BA/VAc samples without MDO, which have zero biodegradation. Biodegradation is influenced by the amount of ester groups (i.e., ring‐opened MDO content), as well as the polymer gel content. An additional experiment with carboxylated cellulose nanocrystals (cCNCs) in the BA/MDO/VAc formulation is shown to promote even greater biodegradation due to the increased hydrophilicity and improved microbial access provided by the cCNCs. Overall, this study demonstrates that MDO‐based formulations, especially those incorporating cCNCs, show promise as environmentally friendly, compostable products in support of a more sustainable polymer industry.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".