Scientists turn banana peel into bioplastic to package food

Researchers from the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) Instrumentation and the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) used banana peel to create bioplastic films with potential for application as active food packaging.

The research was detailed in article published in Journal of Cleaner Production. Using a simple process, with pre-treatments involving only water or a diluted acid solution, the researchers completely converted banana peels into bioplastic films with excellent antioxidant properties, protection against ultraviolet (UV) radiation and without generating waste.

The films performed equal to or even better than many bioplastics prepared in a similar way, from other types of biomass, but through other methods, including more complex, expensive and time-consuming, therefore less productive, processes for the transformation of agri-food waste.

The study was supported by FAPESP through the project “Biodegradable films from whole by-products of fruit processing ”, coordinated by researcher Henriette Monteiro Cordeiro de Azeredo, from Embrapa.

The banana value chain, in particular, generates a significant amount of by-products that are currently underused or improperly discarded, resulting in losses and environmental problems. According to Brazilian researchers, for each ton of banana processed, up to 417 kg of peels can be generated.

Hence the researchers' motivation to reduce the waste generated by discarding the shell, making full use of it, including its numerous bioactive compounds, such as phenolics, and pectin, an important polysaccharide that can be used in the production of biodegradable films.

“Using it as bioplastic film is an opportunity to value this waste and reduce the environmental impact associated with the use of non-biodegradable plastics,” chemical engineer Rodrigo Duarte Silva, who developed the film during his post-graduate studies, told Embrapa Instrumentação’s Press Office. doctorate with support from FAPESP.

According to Azeredo, the film prepared on a laboratory scale, with a brownish color and micrometric thickness, can be used as primary packaging for products prone to oxidation reactions. The promising results obtained experimentally encouraged researchers to continue studies to further improve some of the film's properties. Among them are interactions with water, a research challenge due to the high affinity for water of the molecules present in biomass.

Furthermore, the researchers intend, in approximately one and a half years, to develop the bioplastic film on a pilot scale to make the process even more interesting from an industrial point of view.

The article From bulk banana peels to active materials: Slipping into bioplastic films with high UV-blocking and antioxidant properties can be read at: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652624001562?via%3Dihub .

More information: https://tinyurl.com/mesb7zt8 .