Bio-based polymers for sustainable packaging and biobarriers: A critical review

Abstract

Barrier materials have an important role in various packaging applications, especially considering the requirements associated with protection and shelf life. Most barrier materials used in today’s industry are either manufactured from oil resources or metals. Driven by the increase in environmental awareness, access to oil resources as well as legislation, new and environmentally benign alternatives are at the center stage of scientific and industrial interest. This article covers the use of wood-derived polymers and those produced from microorganisms, which display remarkable barrier properties. Wood-based products have received great attention for their air/oxygen resistance. As far as their properties, microorganism-derived biopolymers are comparable to conventional oil-based thermoplastics, but their cost may still be an issue. Both, wood and microorganism-derived biopolymers are challenged when moisture, grease and oxygen resistance are simultaneously required. Hence, multilayer structures and composites are needed to fulfill the most demanding requirements of packaging materials. Here we offer a review of these topics together with a discussion of their prospects.

Biobased Nanomaterials─The Role of Interfacial Interactions for Advanced Materials

“…In particular, environmental concerns urge for the utilization of more sustainable raw materials to replace the oil-derived additives commonly used in paper manufacturing and coatings for cellulose-based barrier materials. Biopolymers like cellulose derivatives, hemicellulose, starch, chitosan, and other polysaccharides are very good candidates to replace fossil additives, but their widespread utilization at the industrial scale has generally been hindered due to their poor resistance against water, lack of optimized industrial processing technology, and relatively higher costs with respect to fossil-based additives. ,,− Chemical modification of the biopolymers and a deeper understanding of their interactions with cellulose and CNMs could boost the industrial utilization of biopolymers from natural resources. The research already carried out on the interactions of hemicellulose and other natural polysaccharides with CNMs provides very valuable information to advance that path.…”

Prominent processing techniques to manipulate semiconducting polymer microstructures

“…1,2 The latter can be endlessly designed and then developed via a plethora of synthetic routes. Therefore, polymer molecules display a multitude of physicochemical properties and functions [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] that extend their use and sustainability 16 in a wide-range of applications, 14,15,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] stretching from the automotive [27][28][29][30][31] and aeronautic [32][33][34][35] industry, to packaging [36][37][38][39][40] and adhesive [41][42][43][44] materials, to energy storage [45][46][47]…”

Superhydrophobic and fluorine-free microfibrillated cellulose-clay composite films for gas barrier applications

“…Packaging materials are used to preserve food and minimize food waste throughout the distribution chain (Verghese et al 2015), with primary role as barriers against the permeation of small molecules such as oxygen and water, but also grease, germs, and aroma (Helanto et al 2019). Petroleum-based polymers are widely used for this purpose owing to their superior combination of permeability, mechanical strength and low market prices (Mikkonen and Tenkanen 2012) (Cazon and Vázquez 2021).…”

“…Biobased polymers such as cellulosebased (e.g., cellophane, cellulose acetate, cellulose ethers), polysaccharides (e.g., starch, chitosan, xylan) and protein-based attract increasing attention as potentially sustainable alternatives. Nevertheless, these materials provide a good barrier against oxygen only below 50% of relative humidity (Helanto et al 2019; Abe et al 2021) and their processing cost remains high. This is the case of micro brillated cellulose (MFC), which forms a dense network of highly crystalline nano-and micro-brils with intra-and intermolecular hydrogen bonds (Lin and Dufresne 2014).…”