Technological watch

Abstract Currently, Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) especially Polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) have gained much attention as an environmentally benign alternative to petroleum-derived plastics. However, path to a bright future of sustainable production and development has been hampered by their dubious quality. PHAs are biodegradable, biocompatible, and non-toxic which make them excellent choices for packaging, agriculture, and medicine. Despite having such great scope, PHAs have a number of disadvantages, including a high cost, brittleness, thermal instability, and poor mechanical properties. Thus, PHAs need to be upgraded to enhance its inherent qualities. This upgradation can be primarily achieved by blending PHAs either with natural or synthetic bio-based polymers and adding reinforcements to develop novel PHAs-based biocomposites and blends. Keeping the view of future PHAs multi-dimensional applications, the present study provides an extensive understanding of the blending of PHAs to enhance their physico-chemical traits. Additionally, a number of state-of-the-art processing methods are also discussed in the present study.