Degradation of naturally occurring polymeric materials in sea water environment

TL;DRAbstract

The presented investigations covered environmental degradation of polymer materials (thermoplastic starch, modified cellulose and two types of starch-cellulose composites) in The Baltic Sea at Nordic Wharf of Gdynia harbor. Degradation process was also tested in laboratory conditions in sea water with sodium azide (NaN3, eliminating the microorganisms activity) added. These tests let evaluate the part of chemical hydrolysis in the process of degradation in natural sea environment. During samples' incubation (from 14 to 336 days) the following characteristic parameters of sea water were inspected: temperature, pH, oxygen content, chlorides' content and salinity (Table 1). The progress of environmental degradation of polymeric materials has been evaluated on the basis of weight loss (Fig. 5-7), changes of the surface (Fig. 1-4) as well as changes of the structure of the material, observed microscopically (Fig. 8-10). It was found that in the natural environment of sea water the enzymatic

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