Biobased Polymers for Packaging Applications

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, both academic and industrial research in the field of plastic packaging has been strongly oriented towards green routes. The growing concerns of consumers regarding global warming and environmental legislation and regulation are even more propelling for the development of environmentally-friendly materials with a low carbon footprint, are increasingly encouraging research in green chemistry. In this case, it becomes imperative to decrease the demands for resources and energy, control waste, minimize gas emissions, reduce environmental pollution, optimize product processes, and, finally, make waste recycling effective. One interesting route is to utilize renewable monomers, coming from renewable feedstocks, which are polymerized with conventional melt or gas phase processes. Obtained bio-based polymers have advantages with respect to low carbon footprint materials, with recycling possibilities, obtained using energy-effective solvent free polymerization processes. In order to avoid conflict with food production, feedstock monomers, coming from agricultural and forestry wastes, are preferred. For example, lignocelluloses and starch could be used to produce a large variety of bio-based monomers, such as aliphatic hydrocarbons (ethylene, propylene, butylene, etc.), diols (ethylene glycol, 1,3-propanediol, 1,4-butanediol, etc.), diacids (succinic acid, sebacic acid, terephthalic acid, etc.), hydroxyalkanoic acids (lactic acid, hydroxybutyric acid, etc.), and furans (2,5-furandicarboxylic acid, etc.), which can be readily used in a polymerization process to produce bio-based polymers. Between them, furanoates polyesters have attracted a great deal of attention. When 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid was included in the ten bio-based chemicals list, this monomer was taken into consideration as a potential replacement for terephthalic acid, a widely monomer used for the production of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) polymers.

The progress achieved during the last few years could help researchers to work on fully bio-based polymers, in order to obtain new materials with real competitive properties relative to their oil-based counterparts. Some challenges could be the production of raw bio-based monomers in bulk quantities, the production of high quality bio-based polymers while controlling the cost–property ratio. Furthermore, the synthesis of bio-based polymers and copolymers with biodegradable features is also an interesting field of study to be addressed by the scientific community.

Prof. Valentina Siracusa
Guest Editor

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