what are some essential qualities of a biopolymer?
Biopolymers are polymers that are produced by living things. As well as that, they need to fit the definition of a polymer (a large molecule made from the chaining of one or more repeating smaller units called monomers.
why will biopolymers become increasingly important in our society?
Commercially significant polymers such as polyethylene (polyethene), polyvinyl chloride (polychloroethene) and polystyrene (polyphenylethene) are created from ethene. We get most of our ethene from the cracking of large chain molecules in petroleum. But petroleum is non-renewable - that means it's going to run out eventually if we keep using it.
Also, those polymers I just mentioned are rather eco-unfriendly. They take an extremely long time to break down (think of shopping bags) because they're relatively new materials - the microbes haven't evolved to be able to break down those polymers.
Biopolymers are biodegradable (since those microbes are already familiar with the and are renewable - we make them from plants, which we can grow a lot of. Also, biopolymers like cellulose can be used to make petrochemicals - since fossil fuels originated from plants in the first place, coal and cellulose have the same carbon groups that are needed to make important petrochemicals like ethene.
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Also, I've attached my notes on the topic so far.
