IIT Roorkee has Developed Biodegradable Polybags and has Transferred the Technology to a Noida-based company

Professor PP Kundu of the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Roorkee has developed a solution to an urgent problem facing every person in society: the government of India has banned the use of certain types of polybags as of July 2022 because they are non-biodegradable and considered a big hazard to the environment. Kundu’s solution is a thermoplastic starch that can be blended with LDPE, making LDPE biodegradable.

India, being an agricultural country, produces a lot of starch. This includes potato, rice, wheat, maise, or corn starch. Professor Ajit Kumar Chaturvedi, Director of IIT Roorkee, said that the newly developed technology is expected to have great value because of the large quantities of starch produced in India and because it is environmentally friendly.

The technology for manufacturing biodegradable polybags has been transferred from IIT Roorkee to Noida-based Agrasar Innovative LLP. Agrasar will use this technology to manufacture biodegradable polybags on a large scale.

The most common plasticisers used are polyfunctional alcohols, such as glycerol and sorbitol, and some low molecular weight compounds that can form intermolecular hydrogen bonds, like water and formamide.

When starch and the plasticiser are heated and constantly agitated, they undergo gelatinisation. This process reduces the starch’s crystallinity enough to create an amorphous structure. Because it is amorphous, it can be blended with LDPE.