Plastics based materials are frequently used in packaging and can be seen universally in both the developed and developing societies. At present, most of the currently used food packaging materials are non-degradable and are creating serious environmental problems. New technologies are being explored and developed to study the complex interaction between the food packaging materials and food. For example, nanocomposite of cellulose constitute environmentally friendly packaging, which is easily recycled by combustion and requires low power consumption in production. There are several such biodegradable materials which are available at a low price, have good mechanical properties and allow disposal in the soil. This is advantageous because biological degradation produces only carbon dioxide, water, and inorganic compounds to name a few. It has also been discovered that biodegradable plastics made of such materials can be disposed of together with organic waste. The widespread use of biopolymers in place of standard plastics would help to reduce the weight of waste. Therefore, biodegradable materials take part in the natural cycle "from nature to nature" and play an important role for environmental sustainability. So in this article, we briefly summarizes the different characteristic of biodegradable polymers being used in food packaging applications.

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A b s t r a c t. The paper shows the results of a study on the effect of starch binder on the mechanical, physical and burning properties of charcoal briquettes. Two types of binders were repeatedly used to make briquettes of native wheat starch and modified wheat starch, at 8% of the whole. Briquetting was performed in a roller press unit, and pillow-shaped briquettes were made. The moisture of the mixed material ranged from 28 to 32%. The product, whether the former or the latter, was characterized by very good mechanical properties and satisfactory physical properties. Moreover, the type of starch binder had no effect on toughness, calorific heating value, volatiles, fixed carbon content and ash content. However, the combustion test showed quite different burning properties. As briquettes should have short firing up time and lower smokiness, as well as high maximum temperature and long burning time, we have concluded that briquettes with native wheat starch as a binder are more appropriate for burning in the grill.K e y w o r d s: charcoal briquette, starch binder, burning INTRODUCTIONCharcoal fuel has many attractive features: it contains almost no sulfur or mercury and is low in nitrogen and ash, in addition, it is easy to store and handle (Antal and Grønli, 2003). Further technical and economic aspects of fine coal and charcoal briquettes have been evaluated because of the binder and briquetting parameters. Briquetting pressure and dwell time have a weak impact, while binder type and curing conditions exert the greatest influence on briquettes quality (Borowski and Hycnar, 2013;Taulbee et al., 2009). What is more, mechanical properties increase with time of curing at room temperature of carbonized-coal briquettes (Blesa et al., 2003).Binders such as molasses, starch, tar, etc. are added to produce fuel briquettes, and the addition of starch binder, as well as gum Arabic binder improves the caloric value of biofuel briquettes (Zakari et al., 2013). Physical properties such as density, compressive strength and impact resistance index of briquettes also show significant improvement because of binders (Sen et al., 2016). Further additives are inorganic fillers which delay the heat release of the burning briquette, and ignition enhancers, which promote greater combustibility. Charcoal briquettes are promoted as substitutes for natural coal, petroleum coke or lignite. Still, the advantages of charcoal fuel depend on important factors: low sulphur content, high carbon to ash ratio, relatively few and nonreactive inorganic impurities, specific pore structure with large surface area, good reduction ability, almost smokeless emissions (Emrich, 1985). The disadvantages of charcoal fuel are clearly seen when compared to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) fuel. The charcoal grilling footprint of CO 2 is almost three times larger than for LPG combustion. In addition, LPG is radically more efficient than charcoal in its production, and considerably more efficient in cooking. However, the use of LPG requires a heavier and more...

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Low-temperature heat sources have become increasingly popular in recent years, particularly for energy generation. The majority of thermal devices in the market (including devices using solar energy, geothermal energy, waste energy, and so on) transform heat into electricity indirectly, requiring mechanical work before producing power. Through the Seebeck effect, the technology that employs a thermoelectric generator (TEG) may directly transform heat energy into electricity. The TEG technology provides several advantages, including compactness, quietness, and the absence of moving components. TEGs have a low thermal and electrical efficiency, which is one of their main drawbacks. Therefore, the performance of a thermoelectric generator is improved by employing liquid evaporation heat transfer in this manuscript. The performance of the thermoelectric was examined experimentally and compared to the liquid evaporation mode under varied heat flux values and different modes of heat transfer in terms of free and forced convection with and without fins. The experimental results revealed that when compared to free convection without fins, adopting forced liquid evaporation convection would improve TEG voltage variation by 435.9%.

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Jedną z głównych przyczyn pogarszania się stanu środowiska naturalnego są zanieczyszczenia powietrza, rozumiane jako wprowadzenie do atmosfery w ilości lub natężeniu szkodliwym dla środowiska substancji stałych, ciekłych, gazowych lub energii falowej. Substancja lub energia wprowadzona mają zdolność do utrzymywania się w atmosferze przez określony odcinek czasu, przez co istotnie zmieniają jej skład, a także mogą wywoływać negatywne skutki na biosferę lub inne elementy środowiska. Światowa Organizacja Zdrowia za