Special Issue "Sustainable Advanced and Smart Polymer Materials"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Materials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2021.

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Veerle Vandeginste
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Materials Engineering, Campus Bruges, KU Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Interests: sustainability; smart materials; polymers; physical chemistry of material interfaces

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Advanced materials have properties and functionalities that are either improved or new in comparison to traditional materials, which result in superior performance, which is critical for application. Smart materials are a subset of advanced materials that exhibit dynamic properties in response to external stimuli. The evolution of materials development needs to keep pace with the incredibly fast technological evolution, and the development of high-performance functional nanomaterials plays an important enabling and supporting role in this.

Notwithstanding the excellent opportunities offered by advanced and smart polymer materials, the sustainability and circularity of materials have become critical considerations in the development of new materials. We are facing challenges in fabricating materials with improved or new functionalities that simultaneously adopt renewable raw materials and circular-by-design concepts.

The aim of this Special Issue is to present the latest developments in this emerging field of dual-objective polymer materials with advanced and sustainable properties. This issue will collect contributions on such materials in a variety of application fields:

- Sustainable smart textile materials;

- Advanced polymer materials for sustainable energy applications;

- Sustainable advanced materials for smart buildings;

- Biodegradable packaging materials with smart functionalities;

- Advanced polymer materials for sustainable agriculture;

- Sustainable advanced materials in the transport sector.

Prof. Dr. Veerle Vandeginste
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • renewable
  • smart
  • recycling
  • batteries
  • coatings
  • hydrogel
  • biobased
  • nanocomposite

Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission, see below for planned papers.

Planned Papers

The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.

Title: Synthesis of green deep eutectic Solvents for pretreatment wheat straw: Enhance the solubility of typical lignocellulose
Authors: Zedong Teng; Liyan Wang; Bingqian Huang; Shangkang Xie; Jianwei Liu; Tinggang Li
Affiliation: a. Innovation Academy for Green Manufacture, Key Laboratory of Green Process and Engineering, Beijing Engineering Research Centre of Process Pollution Control, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China. b. School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology, Beijing 100083, China c. Beijing Engineering Research Center of Sustainable Urban Sewage System Construction and Risk Control, Key Laboratory of Urban Stormwater System and Water Environment, Ministry of Education, Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Beijing 100044, China. d. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
Abstract: As a novel and environmentally friendly solvent, deep eutectic solvents (DESs) have high potential for biomass pretreatment due to its advantages of low cost, low toxicity strong solubility, excellent selectivity and biocompatibility. Two types of DESs (binary and ternary) were synthesized and characterized, and optimized ternary DES was selected to pretreat wheat straw for enhancement of the solubility of lignocellulose. Moreover, enzymatic hydrolysis was tested to verify the performance of pretreatment. In addition, the changes in surface morphology, structure and crystallinity of wheat straw pretreated by DES were analyzed to reveal the pretreatment mechanism. Experiment results indicated that there was little difference between different DESs in viscosity, but it decreased with the increase of temperature. The DES pretreatment efficiently enhanced the solubility of typical lignocellulose, with the optimal the removal rate of lignin at approximately 69.46%. In addition, the pretreated samples were hydrolyzed by the cellulase for 24 h, the total sugar concentration of the residue was about 5.1 times than that of untreated wheat straw, indicating that DES has the unique ability to selectively extract lignin and hemicellulose from wheat straw while retaining cellulose, and thus enhanced the solubility of lignocellulose. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) determination and scanning electron microscope (SEM) observation showed that the crystallinity index of wheat straw increased and the surface of wheat straw suffered from serious erosion after DES pretreatment. Therefore, DES destroys the covalent bond between lignin and cellulose and hemicellulose, and reduces the intractability of lignin resulting in the lignin dissolution. It suggests that DES can be used as a promising and biocompatible pretreatment way for the cost-effective conversion of lignocellulose biomass into biofuels.

Back to TopTop