In Georgia, researchers have created a flexible plastic alternative for food packaging using crab shells and cellulose.
The team created the film by suspending cellulose from trees and chitin nanofibers in water, then spraying them in alternating layers. Chitin is a biopolymer found in shellfish, insects, and fungi. The resulting bioplastic was flexible, transparent, and compostable. The material also has gas barrier properties compatible with the needs of food packaging.
“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,” says 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.”
The work is described in a recent issue of ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering.