Environmental degradation of polymer 

Polymer degradation is a change in the properties of a polymer or polymer-based product — tensile strength, color, form, etc. — under the influence of one or more environmental influences, such as heat , light or chemicals, such as acids, alkali and certain salts.

Such modifications are usually undesirable, such as product cracking and chemical disintegration or, more rarely, beneficial, such as in biodegradation; for recycling, or intentionally raising the molecular weight of a polymer. Property improvements are often referred to as "aging."

Such a modification shall be stopped or postponed in a finished product. Degradation can be useful for recycling / reusing polymer waste to eliminate or minimize emissions from the environment. Degradation can also be intentionally induced to assist in evaluating the structure.

Polymer degradation

Polymers offer remarkable performance characteristic to modern lodge required by a large market compass but the fate of polymers in the environment has become a major management issue. 

Polymer applications are attractive molecular structures for merchandise engineers who want a long-term attribute. 

These device characteristic also build prominently in the environmental lifespan of polymers. Recently, reputation of microbial abjection of polymeric fabric offer new emerging technological opportunities to modify the enormous pollution scourge incurred through use of polymers/charge card.

 A significant lit exists from which developmental direction for possible biological technologies can be discerned. 

Each report of microbial mediated degradation of polymers must be characterized in detail to provide the database from which a new applied science developed. Contribution of the development must address the kinetics of the degradation process and uncovering new approaches to enhance the pace of degradation. 

The understanding of the interaction of biotic and abiotic degradation is implicit to the applied science development travail.

Abjection and corroding polymers play a role for all polymers. Therefore, the preeminence between degradable and non-degradable polymers is not clean-cut and is simply subjective, since all polymers degrade.

 It is the interaction between the time-graduated degradation table and the time-scale of the practical application which seems to differentiate between degradable and non-degradable polymers.

We usually assign the attribute ‘degradable’ to materials which degrade during their application, or immediately after it. Non-degradable polymers are those that require a substantially thirster time to degrade than the duration of their application. 

Degradation and erosion are investigated in many fields of scientific discipline , such as waste direction and outer space science . Therefore, many different definition for degradation and erosion exist in the current lit and sometimes vary markedly from one another. 

The following definition are adapted for this recap . The cognitive process of ‘degradation’ describes the chain scission process during which polymer string are cleaved to form oligomers and finally to form monomer . ‘Erosion’ designates the personnel casualty of material owing to monomers and oligomers going away the polymer.