Developing innovative green packaging materials

食品和饮料包装（全球市场每年超过3000亿美元）依赖于塑料和各种化学品，这些化学品现在被认为对健康和环境有害。这些化学品通常赋予食品/饮料包装所需的阻隔性、不粘表面、阻燃性和抗菌活性。全球正在出台新的法规来限制/限制这些化学品的使用，这意味着需要为食品/饮料包装找到新的生物安全屏障，这也将支持消费者对安全和环保材料的需求。该项目将开发新的可生物降解和生物安全材料，具有防油/防水表面，阻燃和抗菌性能，可用于食品/饮料包装行业。我们的行业合作伙伴将开发低能耗的环保酶法工艺，以分解废马铃薯和甜菜提取纳米纤维素。纳米纤维素具有显著的拉伸强度、柔韧性和吸收/阻隔性能，并且少量添加到纸混合物中大大提高了强度和坚固性。这些由行业合作伙伴生产的特征纳米纤维素将使用非危险化学品和蛋白质连接到它们上，这将赋予耐油/耐水性，抗菌活性和阻燃性能。ISO认可的分析方法将证实这些官能团已适当地整合到纳米纤维素中。将评估新型材料的耐油/耐水性和阻燃性，以及它们的抗病毒和抗菌活性。具有合适功能的纳米纤维素将被提供给合作伙伴，用于以不同的比例掺入纸纤维中，并干燥或作为涂层施加到纸上。这些将由合作伙伴进行物理和化学表征，以确认官能团的存在。合作伙伴将评估复合材料的抗拉强度、耐油/耐水性、水蒸气透过率、气体阻隔性能、易燃性、抗菌活性和在土壤中的生物降解性。最有希望的材料将被指定用于扩大生产评估，并用于生命周期分析，这将表明生产这些材料的经济和环境成本以及能源负担。所有项目合作伙伴将在与现有客户讨论这些产品之前保护知识产权，这些客户是食品/包装行业的全球领导者。将进行进一步的市场分析，以潜在地将这些技术推广到其他市场领域。

Food and drink packaging (\>$300Bn/year global market) relies on plastics and a variety of chemicals now considered hazardous to health and dangerous to the environment. These chemicals usually impart barrier properties, non-stick surfaces, flame retardancy and antimicrobial activities which are required for food/drink packaging. New regulations are being introduced globally to limit/restrict use of these chemicals, meaning that new biosafe barriers for food/drink packaging need to be found, which will also support consumer demand for safe and environmentally friendly materials.This project will develop new biodegradable and biosafe materials with oil/water resistant surfaces, and flame retardant and antimicrobial properties which can be deployed to the food/drink packaging sector. Our industry partners will develop low energy environmentally friendly enzymatic processes to break down waste potato and sugar beet to extract nanocelluloses. Nanocelluloses have remarkable tensile strength, flexibility and absorbancy/barrier properties and small quantities added to paper mixes greatly improves strength and robustness. These characterised nanocelluloses produced by industry partners will have functional groups attached to them using non-hazardous chemicals and proteins, which will impart oil/water resistance, antimicrobial activities and fire retardant properties. ISO accredited analytical approaches will confirm that these functional groups have been suitably integrated into the nanocelluloses. The oil/water resistance and flame retardancy of the novel materials will be assessed, as will their antiviral and antibacterial activities. Nanocelluloses with suitable functionality will be provided to partners for incorporation into paper fibres in different ratios and dried down or applied as a coating to paper. These will be physically and chemically characterised by partners to confirm the presence of functional groups. Partners will assess the composite materials tensile strength, oil/water resistance, water vapour transmission rate, gas barrier properties, flammability, antimicrobial activities and biodegradability in soil. Materials that are the most promising will be earmarked for scaled up production assessment and also for life cycle analysis which will indicate economic and environmental costs and energy burdens of producing these materials. All project partners will protect IP prior to discussing these products with their existing customers, who are global leaders in the food/packaging industry. Further market analysis will be carried out to potentially roll out the technologies to other market sectors.