EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

Networks formed of natural nano-fibrils are an appealing approach to integrate the advantages of nano-scale fibers with sustainable raw materials. Whereas cellulose nanofibrils are already widely applied, nanofibrillated chitin is lagging behind this development. Chitin is commonly derived from crustaceans, necessitating harsh and prolonged chemical and mechanical processes for the isolation...

Bacterial cellulose (BC) is an ultrapure form of cellulose nanofibres with mechanical properties exceeding those of both Kevlar and E-glass fibres. A single BC nanofibre has an estimated Young’s modulus of 160 GPa, which makes it a promising reinforcement for biocomposites. In this work, the focus lies on reinforcing impact modified (IM) acrylic to increase its impact strength while...

Cotton is a predominant raw material in the textile industry. One of the most demanding procedures for the textile industry is dyeing of cotton fabrics with reactive dyes, since traditional dyeing processing leads to substantial environmental impacts, through the discharge of a highly colored and saline dyebath. This can be attributed to the high electrolyte concentrations, such as sodium...

Antimicrobial coatings that prevent the growth of biofilms are an alternative and effective way to inhibit the spread of microbial infections. The sustainable use of these polymers for the development and application of novel green methodologies remains a challenge. This work demonstrates a facile and scalable fabrication approach for the development of new water-based, stable...

Wool aerogel created from wool waste fibers is a potentially viable eco-friendly solution to oil spill clean-ups and thermal insulating material primarily due to is naturally oleophilic nature and insulating properties. Repurposing wool waste also allow us to tackle another issue this waste poses: decreasing landfill spaces. This study aims to develop wool aerogels using wool waste fibers and...

The increasing consumption of animal-based food, caused by a growing human population, resulted in the inevitable problem of higher waste generation, in particular faeces produced by the high number of animals bred. Although manure does not have a high commercial value in itself, it causes a high environmental impact by being one of the main contributors to emission of greenhouse gases in the...

The cryopreservation of biological material has been consolidating its importance in biomedical research for decades now. Its biggest end goal has been to achieve timeless whole-body preservation but current methodologies still struggle with something as simple as cryoprotectant cytotoxicity. A bio-based approach then shows the most promise in tackling a cytotoxicity problem. Thus, we studied...

The need for a circular economy, given the ever-expanding plastics industry, cannot be contested. Their impact on the environment is one of the biggest challenges of the Millennium. This situation birthed the EU funded H2020 MSCA project C-PlaNeT (Circular Plastics Network for Training). By partnership with eight universities 15 Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) are being trained to be a part of...

Concrete is responsible for generating up to 10% of the world’s CO2 emissions and due to its significant mineral resource consumption, has a dramatic effect on our natural infrastructure. There is an urgent need to increase the diversity of feedstock materials suitable for the manufacture of cementitious products, which are environmentally sustainable and have longevity in supply.

The aim...

Recycling of textiles is a major challenge because textiles, whether home or industrial, often consist of two or more materials that form an almost inseparable mixture during the manufacturing process. In the project Tex2Mat, two groups of textiles were investigated.
One group was a cotton-polyester blend for home textiles, the second group was a blend of polyamides (PA 6.6 and PA 6) of...

Due to environmental, economic and regulatory aspects there is a strong need for novel strategies allowing environmentally friendly recycling of plastics and textiles. Enzymes have shown high potential especially for the step-wise recovery of building blocks from blended materials. We will show that enzymes can specifically hydrolyze and solubilize certain components of blended textiles or...

Polypropylene (PP) is the world’s second most widely used commodity polymer accounting for 13% of total usage by value (23% by volume) and is employed for a huge variety of purposes including packaging, textiles, furnishings, pipes, vehicle components, electrical equipment, ropes and even banknotes. As an oil-derived polymer the downside to PP is that it is a non-sustainable resource as well...

Mixed engineering plastic wastes (MPs) at the end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) have been overlooked for decades due to their low weight fraction in automobiles and complex characteristics. These resulted in landfilling 500 kilo tonnes of ELVs plastic waste in 2017. Generally, compounding these MPs, which are the residue after the sorting process, performs poor mechanical properties and devalued...

Plastic waste currently represents a very important environmental issue, with plastic global production being over 300 Mt and the EU recycled fraction under 40%. The non-recycled plastic undergoes energy recovery in the best case, but in the worst is dispersed or landfilled.
Plastic recycling into mortar/concrete is one of the possible solutions for immobilizing plastic for long times. The...