The Globe and Mail reported on work by Mark MacLachlan, a UBC chemistry professor, who found a way to turn the exoskeletons of lobsters, crabs and shrimp into biodegradable plastics and battery parts.
The method involves heating up the chitin from lobster shells to burn off the nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen. The remaining carbon can be used to make battery parts.
“Chitin is this super material from crabs and other arthropods that over millions and millions of years has evolved this amazing structure that makes it really, really hard. So the plastics we make from it can have advantageous properties for different applications,” MacLachlan said.
The story also appeared in the Edmonton Sun.
