Chitin is a fibrous substance found in crab and shrimp shells, and the last time we looked at the stuff, Chinese scientists were using it to make an eco-friendly adhesive. Now researchers at Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering are using chitin, along with cellulose from tree fibers, to make a transparent bioplastic.
Specifically, they’ve been able to form these ingredients into a transparent and flexible film that they envision being used for food packaging. According to Science Daily,
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“The main benchmark that we compare it to is PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, one of the most common petroleum-based materials in the transparent packaging you see in vending machines and soft drink bottles,” said J. Carson Meredith, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “Our material showed up to a 67 percent reduction in oxygen permeability over some forms of PET, which means it could in theory keep foods fresher longer.”
Image credit: Allison Carter, Georgia Tech … Environmentalists have long looked for renewable ways to replace petroleum-based materials in consumer products. With the amount of cellulose already produced and a ready supply of chitin-rich byproducts left over from the shellfish food industry, there’s likely more than enough material available to make the new films a viable flexible-packaging alternative, Meredith said.
The next challenge will be scaling up the production process; while technology to extract cellulose from wood already exists, cost-effective chitin-processing machines do not. It will likely be up to manufacturing engineers, and a deep-pocketed, environmentally conscious corporation to back them, to make crab/tree bioplastics a reality.
Source: core77