Ramani Narayan

ABC News | 2024-12-18

Modern humans rely on plastic in their everyday lives. They eat off plastic and use plastic for packaging and transport, Ramani Narayan, a university distinguished professor of chemical engineering and materials science at Michigan State University, told ABC News.

Yale E360 | 2022-12-13

“The concept that we could use it, throw it away, and it doesn’t matter where you throw it, and it’s going to safely disappear, that does not exist,” said Ramani Narayan, a professor at the School of Packaging at Michigan State University. “Nobody could engineer something like that, not even nature.”

NBC News | 2022-07-30

According to Yale Environment 360, bioplastics like PHA and PLA represent a $9 billion share of the $1.2 trillion plastic market. Ramani Narayan, distinguished professor in the department of chemical engineering and materials science at Michigan State University, said while traditional plastics have backbones made of very strong carbon-carbon bonds, bioplastics like PHA and PLA have a weaker ester backbone, which allows them to be consumed by microbes and thus degrade much more quickly than traditional plastics.

BBC | 2021-08-01

Like other plastic-eating organisms, Pseudomonas breaks down the polyurethane using enzymes; and the team has now carried out a genomic analysis of the bacterium with the aim of identifying the particular genes that code for these enzymes. But some question whether such techniques will ever be commercially viable. "Enzyme or microbial conversion of PET to its constituent building blocks is interesting science and needs to be explored. However, the technology will have to compete with proven, commercial conversion technologies using mundane, less exciting water-catalyst systems," said Professor Ramani Narayan of Michigan State University.