Environmental & Analytical Toxicology

Effect of Different Sterilization Methods on Biodegradation of Biomedical Polypropylene

Abstract

Sameh AS Alariqi, Ali A Mutair, and RP Singh

The aim of the present work is to study the effect of different sterilization methods on the biodegradation of biomedical polypropylene (PP) under the same biotic conditions. Three different sterilization techniques; γ-irradiation, steam sterilization and UV-irradiation were used to compare the effect of different sterilization methods on the biodegradability of PP. Neat and sterilized samples were incubated in compost and fungal culture environments. The changes in functional groups, mechanical properties, surface morphology and intrinsic viscosity in polymer were characterized by FT-IR spectroscopy, Instron, SEM and viscometric measurements, respectively. It was observed that the biodegradation of γ-sterilized samples in composting and microbial culture environments was higher than UVirradiated samples, while UV-irradiated more than steam-sterilized and neat samples. The results showed that the radio and photo-oxidative pretreatment directly enhanced the biodegradability of PP as the increase in fungal growth rate and weight loss during composting was found. The biodegradation rate of PP at the same biotic conditions mainly depends on the rate of degradation that initially occurred during sterilization. Overall, this study demonstrated that the biodegradation of sterilized PP in biotic conditions significantly depends on the nature of sterilization method.