Among many goals of the BioADD project, one is to examine the potential of biocarbon as an additive to increase the speed of biopolymer degradability. In fact, biocarbon addition will be tested together with 2 types of bioplastics, Solanyl®️ and PLA. It is expected that will increase the rate of hydrolysis and, in turn, help with the breaking down of the material.
Currently, degradability and compostability experiments of mentioned bioplastics (mixed with biocarbon) are being carried out in a form of a test run. To determine the biodegradability, biological oxygen demand (BOD) of the samples is being checked. The value indicates the level of microbial activity on the account of degradation of the plastic. It will then be possible to correlate the level of respiration, the amount of oxygen consumed, to the level of bioplastic degradation.
To determine the BOD, OxiTop®️ IDS respirometric measuring system is being used. The system contains specific volume glass bottles for samples, measuring heads for BOD detection, and a meter/remote controller for making adjustments as well as accessing the measured values. The data can be accessed in numerical form, or as a graph, which can be particularly useful to understand the evolution in time. It presents daily BOD values and allows easy surveillance of the experiment.
The experimental test run is currently in first weeks, and expected to run until mid-April.