Publications by authors named "Deborah F Mielewski"

This review provides a current summary of the major sources and distribution of ocean plastic contamination, their potential environmental effects, and prospects towards the mitigation of plastic pollution. A characterization between micro and macro plastics has been established, along with a comprehensive discussion of the most common plastic waste sources that end up in aquatic environments within these categories. Distribution of these sources stems mainly from improper waste management, road runoff, and wastewater pathways, along with potential routes of prevention.

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There are millions of tons of post-food processing residues discarded annually. Currently, these waste materials are discarded to landfill, used as animal feed or incinerated. This suggests that there are potential uses for these materials in value-added applications.

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This work features the first-time use of poly(trimethylene terephthalate) (PTT), a biobased engineering thermoplastic, for fused deposition modeling (FDM) applications. Additives such as chain extenders (CEs) and impact modifiers are traditionally used to improve the processability of polymers for injection molding; as a proof of concept for their use in FDM, the same strategies were applied to PTT to improve its printability. The filament processing conditions and printing parameters were optimized to generate complete, warpage-free samples.

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