Transforming Styrofoam waste into biodegradable plastic

Procedure:

1. Freeze-dried cell powder is washed with hot acetone for 20 min.

2. After drying, the cell powder is mixed with 50 volumes of chloroform for 48 h at 30C.

3. The clear polymer solution is recovered by centrifugation to remove the majority of the non-PHB cell material; this is followed by polishing filtration.

4. Finally, pure PHB is obtained by non-solvent precipitation (five times the volume of chloroform) and filtration. The nonsol-vent used is a mixture of methanol and water (7:3, vol/vol).

Reference: https://aem.asm.org/content/61/1/34.short