Oregon State Students Combine Wine-making, Energy Production And Develop New Polymer

by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 06.14.07
Science & Technology

Wine-making, meet renewable energy production: a team of undergraduate engineering students from Oregon State University has developed an environmentally friendly, biodegradable polymer derived from biodiesel and wine-making byproducts that could replace polystyrene foam meat trays in supermarkets and be used in the manufacture of fire logs, furniture and other consumer goods.

The senior chemical engineering students created this new polymer by combining glyerin, a biodiesel production byproduct, and tartaric acid, a common byproduct of wine production. "When put together, those ingredients can make a hard, bubbly polymer," said Heather Paris, one of the students. They blended sawdust and woodchips into the mixture to produce a more flexible, moldable material after their first attempts yielded a very hard, sticky substance.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/06/wine_biodiesel_polymer.php