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764 Biomacromolecules, Vol. 11, No. 10, 2010
Tachibana et al.
Scheme 4. Polycondensation of partially biomass-based
poly(butylene terephthalate) (PBT) with BD synthesized from
furfural and petroleum-based terephthalic acid
The use of the AMS method as the standard verification method
for biomass-based plastics could promote the change from
petroleum-based plastics to biomass-based plastics. These fully
and partially biomass-based PBSs can be used as standard
materials for the measurement of biomass carbon ratios using
the AMS method because the PBSs have arbitrary biomass
carbon ratios and homogeneous biomass carbon compositions.
Acknowledgment. The authors are grateful for financial
support from the New Energy and Industrial Technology
Development Organization (NEDO) for the Research Project
entitled “Development of preparatory basic bioenergy technolo-
gies: Accelerated technology development for biofuel: R&D of
method to measure biomass carbon ratio of biopolyolefin”.
Supporting Information Available. Details of AMS method.
The law data of biomass carbon ratio, the melting temperature,
the number average molecular weight, and yield of each
polymer. This material is available free of charge via the Internet
at http://pubs.acs.org.
PBT polymerized from biomass-based BD with four carbons
and petroleum-based terephthalic acid with eight carbons is a
partially biomass-based plastic with 12 carbons in the polymer
unit, and the biomass carbon ratio reaches 33.3% (4/[4 + 8]).
Partially biomass-based engineering plastics are important in
decreasing carbon dioxide emissions and in conserving petro-
leum resources, even if the biomass carbon ratio is 33%. We
succeeded in synthesizing partially biomass-based PBT from
biomass-based BD and petroleum-based terephthalic acid or
References and Notes
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The effective use of biomass feedstock is a pressing problem.
Biomass-based materials are needed for sustainable development
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to conserve petroleum resources. Biomass-based PBS is one
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