Worldwide, 118 million to 138 million tonnes of organic waste are generated annually, with waste from food production and distribution chains accounting for 100 million tonnes. Only about 25% of this bio waste is collected and recycled. The remaining 75% is simply abandoned, representing a huge loss of potential resources and great damage to the environment.
Converting waste into resources (or, in the latest jargon, “converting garbage into cash”) is one of the driving forces of the circular economy. If waste comes from biomass, it is part of the circulating bioeconomy. This topic is Advanced material..
“Our group sees different types of waste and residues as follows: raw materials For over 10 years. We conducted a critical review of the literature and repositioned the cutting edge in strategies for converting agricultural food loss and waste into bioplastics and advanced materials. We looked for an argument to not do this, but found nothing. “This is a win-win,” said Caio Gomide Otoni, the lead author of the article. Mr. Otoni is a professor of materials engineering at the Federal University of San Carlos (DEMA-UFSCar) in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil. And the creator of a group called maTREErials.
For example, as an alternative to the simpler and more environmentally harmful recycling of agricultural industrial waste as cattle feed, this study found that habitually discarded or underutilized biomass could be used in bioplastics. It has been shown to serve as a low cost raw material for advanced materials in a variety of high value-added devices.
Applications range from multifunctional packages with anti-virus, anti-bacterial and anti-oxidant properties to flexible electronics, biomedical equipment, power generation, storage and transmission equipment, sensors, insulation and soundproofing, cosmetics and more.
“The link between food materials and energy is highly relevant to the sound-cycle bioeconomy. We decompose agricultural food waste and convert the results into monomeric, polymer and colloidal building blocks for synthesis. We have set out to present a state-of-the-art strategy for. Advanced material The penultimate author of the article, Daniel Lemos Correa, said: Professor of Chemistry and Biotechnology at UFSCar.
Converting food loss and waste into industrial “green materials”, as illustrated in the European Green Deal, is a new policy option in the most developed countries. “The recycling bioeconomy maximizes the use of sidestreams and residuals from agriculture, food processing and forest-based industries and reduces the amount of waste sent to landfills,” said the European Commissioner on the Program. The official website of the association states.
Article by Otoni et al. If the stratosphere is considered a boundary, we argue that there is nothing to “throw away.” Converting waste into useful resources is a reasonable alternative to covering the planet with garbage.
“The complex and non-uniform composition of food loss and biomass from waste poses technical and economic challenges,” Otoni said. “We need to work on what we can call” resistance to biomass deconstruction. ” Another negative effect is the seasonality of agricultural production. Certain types of waste are abundant at certain times and rarely at other times. Even if they are available, their composition usually fluctuates.But the main obstacle to large-scale upcycling [creatively recycling materials into new products with more environmental value] It’s political in nature. We hope that startups and highly innovative companies can overcome these barriers and move the process forward. “
As the article shows, there are technical routes to do so. The author has already mastered them on a laboratory scale, and in some cases semi-pilot or pilot scale. Henriette Monteiro Cordeiro de Azeled, co-author and researcher at LNNA-EMBRAPA, said:
In the image at the top of this page, the material obtained from the minimal treatment of carrots on a semi-pilot scale at LNNA illustrates the potential for conversion of food waste to bioplastics.
Researchers also produce antibacterial foam from sugarcane bagasse, packages containing chitin extracted from the exoskeleton of crustaceans and insects, and emulsion-stabilized particles that may be applicable in the production of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and paints. Did.
As you can see, this study shows a strong affinity for the economies of countries such as Brazil, the world’s largest producer of sugar cane and oranges and a major producer of many other food crops. Also remember that the very important causes of food loss and waste are related to fruits and vegetables. About one-third of the total production is lost from one end of the chain to the other.
“Most of the food loss and waste contains high levels of vitamins, minerals, fiber and protein, all of which can ideally be returned to food,” Otoni said. I am. “But most of them are classified as inappropriate and rejected based on microbiological and sensory criteria. Therefore, waste is a useful material with potential applications in chemical platforms and high value-added devices. Alternatives to Convert to. Food Waste, Food Producers are really interested in assessing these trends. “
One example is the edible bioplastic developed by Luiz Henrique Capparelli Mattoso, one of the leaders in this research line at LNNA-EMBRAPA. The research is done in a network and there are contributions from dozens of researchers in this particular area. The other co-author of this article is Bruno Matos, a researcher at Aalto University in Finland. Marco Beaumont is a researcher at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna, Austria. Orlando Rojas, Director of the Bio-Production Institute at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
According to Mattos, ” waste Biomass is the same as biomass from purer, less processed raw materials such as cotton and pulp and paper. However, the waste contains some other residual molecules, such as pectin and lignin, which provides a palette of larger properties that can be investigated to introduce functionality into bioplastics. ”
Produce kerosene from bio-based sidestream
For more information:
Caio G. Otoni et al, The Food–Materials Nexus: Next Generation Bioplastics and Advanced Materials from Agri-Food Residues, Advanced material (2021). DOI: 10.1002 / adma.202102520
Quote: According to the survey, how to convert waste into materials for advanced industries (December 8, 2021) can be found at https://phys.org/news/2021-12-materials-advanced-industries.html to 2021. Obtained on December 8, 2014.
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Research shows how to convert waste into materials for advanced industries
https://phys.org/news/2021-12-materials-advanced-industries.html Research shows how to convert waste into materials for advanced industries