Citation: Haibo Ye, Qianyu Li, Juan Li, Didi Li, Zhimin Ao. Review on the abiotic degradation of biodegradable plastic poly(butylene adipate-terephthalate): Mechanisms and main factors of the degradation[J]. Chinese Chemical Letters, ;2025, 36(1): 109861. doi: 10.1016/j.cclet.2024.109861 shu

Review on the abiotic degradation of biodegradable plastic poly(butylene adipate-terephthalate): Mechanisms and main factors of the degradation

Haibo Ye ^{a, b} ,
Qianyu Li ^{c, d} ,
Juan Li ^c ,
Didi Li ^{a, b} ,
Zhimin Ao ^{c, *,}

a.
Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Joint Laboratory for Contaminants Exposure and Health, Guangzhou Key Laboratory Environmental Catalysis and Pollution Control, Institute of Environmental Health and Pollution Control, Guangzhou 510006, China
b.
Guangdong Key Laboratory of Environmental Catalysis and Health Risk Control, Key Laboratory for City Cluster Environmental Safety and Green Development of the Ministry of Education, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China
c.
Advanced Interdisciplinary Institute of Environment and Ecology, Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai 519087, China
d.
School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China

Zhimin.ao@bnu.edu.cn

Received Date: 5 December 2023
Revised Date: 14 March 2024
Accepted Date: 4 April 2024
Available Online: 5 April 2024

Figures(6)

Poly(butylene adipate-terephthalate) (PBAT), as one of the most common and promising biodegradable plastics, has been widely used in agriculture, packaging, and other industries due to its strong biodegradability properties. It is well known that PBAT suffers a series of natural weathering, mechanical wear, hydrolysis, photochemical transformation, and other abiotic degradation processes before being biodegraded. Therefore, it is particularly important to understand the role of abiotic degradation in the life cycle of PBAT. Since the abiotic degradation of PBAT has not been systematically summarized, this review aims to summarize the mechanisms and main factors of the three major abiotic degradation pathways (hydrolysis, photochemical transformation, and thermochemical degradation) of PBAT. It was found that all of them preferentially destroy the chemical bonds with higher energy (especially C-O and C=O) of PBAT, which eventually leads to the shortening of the polymer chain and then leads to reduction in molecular weight. The main factors affecting these abiotic degradations are closely related to the energy or PBAT structure. These findings provide important theoretical and practical guidance for identifying effective methods for PBAT waste management and proposing advanced schemes to regulate the degradation rate of PBAT.
- Biodegradable plastics,
- PBAT,
- Abiotic degradation,
- Degradation mechanism
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