Abstract
Single-use plastic items made of non-biodegradable and fossil-based materials have been identified as a major environmental problem in modern society. Food packaging materials represent an important fraction of these, and replacement with biosourced, sustainable and low-cost alternatives, is a key priority. In the present work, and for the first time, trays suitable for some food packaging applications were produced by the hot-pressing of brewer’s spent grains (BSG, a low added-value byproduct of the beer industry), bound with potato starch. Expanded polystyrene (EPS) trays were used as reference, since this material has been widely used in food packaging trays. The results demonstrated that all trays produced with varying proportions of BSG and potato starch have appropriate flexural strength, with values ranging between 1.51 ± 0.32 MPa, for 80% BSG content, and 2.62 ± 0.46 MPa, for 40% BSG content, which is higher than for EPS, 0.64 ± 0.50 MPa. Regardless of BSG content, flexural strength and modulus decreased significantly after contact with water, due to starch plasticization, attaining values below EPS. Trays produced with 60% BSG, and also with the addition of chitosan and glyoxal presented the highest flexural strength, both before and after contact with water, 3.75 ± 0.52 MPa and 0.44 ± 0.11 MPa, respectively. The latter is reasonably close to the reference value obtained for EPS.
Highlights
Europe produces about 25 million tons of plastic waste per year, with more than 60% resulting from packaging [1]
In the and present work, different compositions were tested for the production of disposable biosourced trays using brewer’s spent grain (BSG) and potato starch as main raw materials
Different compositions were tested for the production of disposable of brewers spent grain (BSG) content on the mechanical and water resistance properties of BSG/starch trays was studied
Summary
Europe produces about 25 million tons of plastic waste per year, with more than 60% resulting from packaging [1]. These petroleum-based plastics raise concerns about their disposal in the environment, due to the negative impact in the fauna and flora, with possible detrimental effects for human health. Production typically involves hot-pressing, with temperatures usually ranging between 130 to 220 ◦ C, and the pressing times between 120 s to 20 min [2,3,4,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. The different production parameters depend on the water content of the mixture, the pressing temperature, its density and the pressing apparatus
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