NEOPLASTICS

Petroleum-derived plastics produce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), the primary cause of climate change, at every single stage of their life cycle. On the contrary, plant biomass is produced via photosynthesis, which involves the transformation of carbon dioxide (one of the GHGs), water, and light into chemical bonds. Therefore, using plant biomass to produce bioplastics removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and keeps it stored throughout the product's useful life. Therefore, NEOPLASTICS aims to valorize highly available, low-cost, and non-edible lignocellulosic and non-lignocellulosic vegetable waste to prepare bioplastics that represent an alternative to the traditionally used petroleum-derived polymers for agricultural and packaging applications. Specifically, this project will study the role of natural deep eutectic solvents (NADES) as facilitators for transforming biomass into bioplastics. These compounds are gaining importance as solvents for vegetable waste valorization. They are usually used for biomass fractionation, and only a few recent works have reported their use in transforming natural polymers into bioplastics by acting either as solvents or as plasticizers. These researches represent only a starting point for what it is possible to do with these innovative solvents, whose main advantage is that it is possible to tune their physicochemical properties by varying the nature and ratio of their constituents, which in turn can lead to a wide range of materials properties for different applications. The project introduced here is highly ambitious. It will not only provide advantages such as zero waste generation, contribution to the circular economy, and a low carbon footprint manufacturing process, but it will also boost the career of the experienced researcher and enrich the knowledge and experiences of both the researcher and the host institution, impacting positively on the scientific community, the civil society, and the business sector.