Novel Bio-Based Materials for Applications under the Spirit of Sustainability, Circular Economy, and Positive Ecological Footprint

Materials have always been a powerful tool for humans’ living evolution, and also the starting point for the R&D on a specific problem solution discovery. Human’s period names such as “Age of clay” or “Age of bronze” or “Age of iron” indicate that the discover and engineering of a specific material could crucially rule and change our life.

Nowadays chalenges such as, reduction of climate change effect, hunger elimination, 9.5 billion people feeding in 2050, and rational management of natural sources, impose the transition from the linear to the circular economy and the adoption of sustainable processes to industrial production. The last few years there has been an effort intensification to correct past mistakes that have caused crucial environmental and living problems on to earth’s life.

One of the dominant concepts of methods to carry out this endeavour is the valorization of biomass and biowastes. Such sustainable processes are on peak this time and novel materials are produced via a greener way, leaving back to the past the traditional chemical methods. Materials for energy applications, activated carbon, graphene, as well as, active food packaging, food safety, reduced food waste, alternative food preservatives, biopolymers, medical building blocks, and finally materials even for space exploration and new planets habitation, could possibly originate from byproducts, biomass, and bio-wastes. Such production processes lead to reduced-cost materials with a neutral CO2 balance.

This Topical Collection offers a domain for scientists and other people involved with materials science and engineering to spread their work results and experience, broadening their knowledge, and potentially producing innovations and discoveries. Submissions including but not limited to the previously mentioned research topics are welcome.

Keywords:

Biomass valorization ; novel materials ; materials engineering ; materials processing ; materials chemistry ; materials structure;