New products: New materials for degradable packaging

Sweet potatoes, corn, straw, and rind were used as main ingredients, bitter gourd, eucalyptus leaves, and china clay were used as accessories to “cook” a “foam board”. Recently, Su Xiaohai, the head chef of this dish, showed his work to reporters.

In 1993, after the graduation of Dr. Su Xiaohai, Germany returned to Wuhan, China. He put the money accumulated in the trade into the first environmental protection project --- paper cups, paper bowls. He did not stop and continued to invest funds to attack the white pollution world. In the past five years, he led the research and development staff of Hubei Green World Technology Company through thousands of experiments, and finally created a set of process technology that uses crop residues to produce degradable packaging materials.

This technology first modified the sweet potato-based and corn-starch-based wastes to a level close to that of ordinary plastics. Starch is used as "cement". They screened waste plant fibers such as rice straw and sponge gourd as "rebar" to enhance their compressive and seismic strength. Use eucalyptus leaf extract to prevent insects, and extracts such as balsam pear and pectin to prevent mildew and corrosion.

At the show, he sent his foamed particles to his mouth and smiled and said that if it was plastic, I would not dare to eat it because it was a natural, degradable material. The reporter also boldly ate one and tasted like popcorn.

The new materials created by Su Xiaohai exceeded the indicators for the use of plastic foam products in terms of strength, hardness, and weight, and the degradation index exceeded the relevant regulations of the national environmental protection department. Can replace electronic, mechanical products, plastic foam packaging, can be recycled for feed after disposal. At present, this technology, which has obtained 5 national invention patents, has passed a pilot test and has formed a fully automated production line from the processes of feeding, mixing, additives, and mold foam molding. After the scaled production, the price is reduced by half compared with other types of packaging materials. Experts who participated in the assessment believe that this technical achievement has the industrialized production requirements.

Source: Science and Technology Daily