Due to the awareness of environmental protection, the promotion of energy saving and the reducing carbon dioxide initiated by the government. The biomass plastics, e.g. poly-lactic acid (PLA), have been used to replace some of the traditional plastics, e.g. plastic container. Since the increasing quantities of imported PLA that will result in the increasing quantities of recycled PLA materials, the investigation of using recycled PLA as the plastic materials for manufacturing usable products becomes the major topic of this research proposal. There are three parts of experimental arrangement in this proposal. The first part of experiment is the design of proper pretreatment procedure to reduce the contamination of recycled PLA. This part of experiment will include an extrusion combining filtration process to make the less-contaminated recycled PLA pellets. The second part of experiment will be a design of compounding process that including the biomass, e.g. starch, compatibilizers, and recycled PLA. The compounded materials will be proceeded to make the plastic products, e.g. plastic films or bags, with good biodegradability. The third part of experiment of this research will be the setup of enzymatic and also the multi-microbes environments that will be used to test the biodegradability of the recycled PLA compounded plastics. The success of this study will promote the fruitful industries of using the recycled PLA for the manufacture of reusable plastic products that will be degradable harmlessly and returning to the nature.

Polylatic acid , Lipase , composting