Continuous casting: A soft processing approach to fabricate polysaccharides-based bioplastics

International Conference and Exhibition on Biopolymers & Bioplastics

August 10-12, 2015 San Francisco, USA

Francys K V Moreira and Luiz H C Mattoso

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: J Material Sci Eng

Abstract :

The last decades have been marked by an intensive research on polysaccharide processing as an effort to fabricate
environmentally benign packaging materials at large scale. Most focuses have been on melt processing techniques due
to the already established knowledge of petroleum-based plastic processing. However, the melt processing of polysaccharides
has shown to be challenging due to the thermomechanical instability of these biopolymers. Here we introduce the continuous
casting as a soft, rapid, and large-scale compatible approach to fabricate bioplastics from polysaccharides. This covers the
implementation of the continuous casting process for cellulose derivatives such as hydroxypropyl-methyl-cellulose and
carboxymethyl-cellulose, and starch with variable amylose/amylopectin ratio. Other successfully tested polysaccharides were
chitosan, pectin carrageenan, and alginate. Bioplastic sheets as thin as 10 μm are possible to be efficiently formed in minute
fractions when any Newtonian aqueous polysaccharide solution is used. However, we disclose how the continuous casting can
be adjustable to non-Newtonian polysaccharide fluids. Polysaccharide-based bioplastics fabricated by continous casting fit
a broad range of mechanical properties for application in numerous food packaging sectors. The future outlooks of this soft
processing for nanotechnology is also covered.

Biography :

Francys K V Moreira is an Engineer with proficiency in natural polymers. He has devoted his scientific career to polysaccharides, mastering their physical chemistry
and processing. He currently serves as a postdoc at the National Nanotechnology Laboratory for Agribusiness (LNNA) of Embrapa Instrumentation, a Brazilian
federal research organization. His research interests include biopolymers in general, nanotechnology, organic/inorganic hybrids and bionanocomposites, sensor
and multifunctional materials for intelligent/active packaging.