Page 31 - Packaging News Jan-Feb 2020
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January-February 2020
www.packagingnews.com.au
MATERIALS INNOVATION
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Banana bonanza
Researchers from the University of New South Wales have developed a way to turn banana plantation waste into biodegradable and recyclable packaging. Kim Berry writes.
LEFT: Associate Professor Jayashree Arcot and researcher Kehao Huang in the lab processing the dried banana pseudostem material.
BELOW: A sample of the finished product – bioplastic film made from banana pseudostem material.
the trays that you see for meat and fruit.” Arcot and Stenzel confirmed in tests that the material breaks down organically after putting ‘films’ of the cellulose material in soil for six months. The results showed that the sheets of cellulose were well on the way to disintegrating in the soil samples.
“The material is also recyclable. One of our PhD students proved that we can recy- cle this three times without any change in properties,” Arcot says.
Tests with food have proved that it poses no contamination risks.
INDUSTRY BUY-IN
For the banana pseudostem to be a realistic alternative to plastic bags and food packag- ing, it would make sense for the banana in- dustry to start processing the pseudostems into powder, which they could then sell to packaging suppliers.
“If the banana industry can come on board, and tell their farmers or growers that there’s a lot of value in using those pseud- ostems to make into a powder which you could then sell, that’s a much better option for them as well as for us,” Arcot says.
At the other end of the supply chain, if packaging manufacturers update their ma- chines to be able to fabricate the nano-cel- lulose film into bags and other food packag- ing materials, then banana pseudostems stand a real chance of making food packag- ing much more sustainable.
“What we’re really wanting at this stage is an industry partner who can look into how this could be upscaled and how cheap- ly we can make it,” Stenzel says.
Arcot agrees. “I think the packaging com- panies would be more willing to have a go at this material, if they knew the material was available readily.” ■
AQUEST to find an agricultural industry where its waste could be turned into something of value led Associate Pro-
fessor Jayashree Arcot and Professor Martina Stenzel from the University of New South Wales School of Chemical
Engineering to banana plantations. Arcot says the banana growing industry is a “good contender” because only 12 per cent of the plant is used (the bananas) while the rest is discarded after harvest. This, combined with the fact the banana plant dies after each harvest, makes it more
wasteful compared to other crops.
Its attractiveness is also increased by its high quality cellulose content and the fact
that the plant is an annual.
“We were particularly interested in the
pseudostems – basically the layered, fleshy trunk of the plant which is cut down after each harvest and mostly discarded on the field. Some of it is used for textiles, some as compost, but other than that, it’s a huge waste,” Arcot says.
The pair researched whether the pseud- ostem could be a valuable source of cellulose, which could be used in packaging, paper products, textiles, and medical applications for wound healing and drug delivery.
Working with pseudostem material from the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, Arcot and Stenzel extracted cellulose to test its suitabil- ity as a packaging alternative.
Arcot says: “The pseudostem is 90 per cent water, so the solid material ends up re- ducing down to about 10 per cent. We bring the pseudostem into the lab and chop it into pieces, dry it at very low temperatures in a drying oven, and then mill it into a very fine powder.”
The powder is then washed with a chem- ical treatment which isolates the nano-cel- lulose, a high value material with a range of applications. Once processed, the material has a consistency similar to baking paper. “One of the applications that interested us greatly was packaging, particularly single- use food packaging where so much ends up in landfill,” Stenzel says.
Arcot says the material can take a num- ber of different formats in food packaging, depending on the intended thickness.
“Depending on how we pour the material and how thick we make it, we could make
What we’re really wanting at this stage is an industry partner who can look into how this could be upscaled and how cheaply we can make it.”


































































































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