CD Laboratory for Biodegradation of Water-Soluble Polymers

Numerous products used in home and personal care contain water-soluble polymers (WSPs) as important high-performance ingredients. In these areas of application alone, WSPs have a global annual production volume of more than 1 million tons, with a rising market demand. Sustainable end-of-life management for WSPs is currently a major challenge, and biodegradable WSPs are of enormous interest in this regard. The basic research conducted in this CD Laboratory addresses fundamental aspects in this context.

Our fundamental understanding of the biodegradation of WSPs in environmental systems is limited. Therefore, the CD Laboratory focuses on researching the chemical and microbiological processes underlying the biodegradation of WSPs. The overall goal is to establish the urgently needed scientific basis for the development and regulation of biodegradable high-performance WSPs.

The research has three main objectives: (i) identifying key factors that influence the biodegradation of WSPs, (ii) deriving relationships between the microbial functioning and the biodegradation of WSPs, and (iii) developing analytical methods that enable detailed investigations of the biodegradation of WSPs and the transition from the laboratory to realistic scenarios.

Since WSPs used in household and personal care products are mainly released into wastewater systems, this CD Laboratory´s research focuses on biodegradation in wastewater and freshwater systems. WSP classes of particular interest include polyamino acids and polysaccharides, which are both considered promising in terms of performance during use and biodegradability at the end of their life cycle.

Through interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaboration in the fields of environmental chemistry, microbiology, and analytical chemistry, transformative insights into the complex process of WSP biodegradation are gained. The research results will inform the development and regulation of high-performance biodegradable WSPs.