With recent attention toward climate change, global warming, and sustainability, there has been a new wave of research regarding the creation and sustainability of biodegradable products. This research has evolved to include the creation of biodegradable biofoams, with the intention to replace other foams that may be environmentally harmful or whose production may be unsustainable. Following this vein, Gunawan et al. conducted research to developed “commercially-relevant polyurethane products that can biodegrade in the natural environment”. One such product includes flip-flops so as part of the research a flip-flop made from algae derived polyurethane was prototyped (see Figure 7). This research ultimately resulted in the conclusion that in both a compost and soil environment (different microorganisms present in each environment) significant degradation occurs in polyurethane foam formulated from algae oil.
Similarly, research has been done where algae oil (AO) and residual palm oil (RPO) have been formulated into foam polyurethane at different ratios to determine what ratio has the optimum biodegradability. RPO is recovered from the waste of palm oil mill and is a byproduct of that manufacturing process. After undergoing a tests to determine biodegradability as well as a thermogravimetric analysis, the team determined that the material could be utilized in applications such as insulation or fire retardants depending on the AO/RPO ratio.
Another focus of biofoam research is the development of biofoams that are not only biodegradable, but are also cost-effective and require less energy to produce. Luo et al. have conducted research in this area of biofoams and have ultimately developed a biofoam that is produced from a “higher content of nature bioresource materials” and using a “minimal [number of] processing steps”. The processing steps include the one-pot method of foam preparation published by F. Zhang and X. Luo in their paper about developing polyurethane biofoams as an alternative to petroleum based foams for specific applications.