My Research - UConn

Since freshman year I have been doing independent research in the Institute of Material Science with biodegradable materials - specifically polylactic acid. At the time I was working with a grad student named Andrew and we attempted several reactions to change the material to improve its thermal properties. We were working with PLA pellets then and the processes we were trying didn't really pan out. Toward sophomore year I was handed off to another grad student Ben since Andrew was graduating. We did the same thing with lactic acid, the liquid monomeric form of PLA, and this arrived at the same 'results' more or less. I took the first semester of Junior year to perform a literature review and cook up some new ways of going about our trials for the past two years. By this time, Ben had graduated as well and the professor who had initially directed the research left UConn. I am now working mostly by myself on the project along with another grad student, David, who has been helping me with finding things or performing different lab techniques. This time around I'm working with lactide, a dimer of lactic acid, so I've worked with all three forms of the stuff by now. The project has become the basis for my Honors Thesis which is required for me to graduate with Honors. Today, things are looking good and it appears like the first step in a three or four part process is more or less over. I'll have to confirm this with my advisor. :p

One concept of significant importance to the whole work is 'green chemistry'. UConn has been among several institutions to really push forward on this idea and it was at an ACS presentation that several of our grad students really made an impact when they presented their work. Green chemistry is an awareness of the ecological and environment impact of chemistry when it is applied on any scale. As far as I see green chemistry, these are some important tenets (and I'm not an expert here):
-Solvent choice: Depending on what you want to do, your reaction mixture may end up as a hot soup of halogens and corrosive compounds. Water is the paragon of solvents when it comes to green chemistry. It's cheap, it's probably the most abundant compound on the surface of the planet, and it has some really interesting properties. The production of organic solvents produces by-products which must be disposed of/put where no one can see them, though often times the solvent or reagent is itself a by-product of one industry or another.
-Catalysts: Using a catalyst reduces the amount of material required to complete a chemical reaction. Less harmful (and expensive) materials are then needed. A big shift in catalysts are ones which allow a reaction to take place in water rather than organic/halogenated solvents. If you're working on an industrial scale, you'd save money by switching to water since a one liter bottle of carbon tetrachloride can cost $100, at least. One of the best things about a catalyst is that you should be able to recover it and use it again.
-Reduce Heavy Metals and Halogens: I can imagine having a dangerous compound that breaks down over time is not as hazardous as having a dangerous atom which won't break down or ever go away. Cadmium, cobalt, mercury, lead, etc. If you try and incinerate an atom, it's not going anywhere but up, into the sky. And then what goes up usually comes down. Of course, anything in high enough concentration will be lethal but when it gets to the point that we're afraid to eat animals because of our own contaminants we have a problem.

Now while my research delves into displacing fossil fuel plastics with a corn-based one, we must also be aware that it takes fossil fuel expediture to grow, care for, harvest, process, ferment, package, ship, unpackage, melt, stir, react, pour, and then ship the final shaped PLA material to wherever its going. This is probably the same route of production more or less for fossil fuel materials but it shows that we need to shift our infrastructure to greener means. However, at the end of the day the biodegradable materials can be broken down into their components or chewed up by bacteria to renew the cycle. When you buy a bottle now, it probably sees a week on the shelf before you pick it up and drink it in a half hour or however long. Then you trash it. And then it lasts forever in a landfill just so it could be used once or, if you just don't care, it ends up on the roadside. Civilization will rise and fall, metal will rust away to nothing, and entire landscapes will be swallowed up over time by the elements but that bottle may outlive it all.

So there is my background in undergraduate research at UConn and the philosophy behind it. I have a presentation to give in a few weeks (three, I believe) about my research so far. It's only 25% done but I'll show them what I have so far. I'll be at the 13th Annual Frontiers in Undergraduate Research Poster Exhibition on April 16th/17th at Wilbur Cross if you want to see my work (around 2-5pm and 11am-2pm). Friday is intended for the faculty and then Saturday I have to downplay the science jargon for the Open House. Even though this is pretty good advertisement for the University, I would still have to pay $50 for a poster which is 10% of the grant I received which is the whole reason why I have to present. Hmm. I'll probably print out individual pages and post them up. But there's a reception afterward with snacks so that's cool.