Agriculture and
Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) scientist Dr. Qiang Liu is developing a new plant-based
bioplastic that will keep meat, dairy, and other food products fresher longer.
It is made from the by-products created by industrial processing of certain
plants.
It not only protects
perishable food better than regular plastic packaging, but also is environmentally-friendly
and sustainable.
Dr. Liu said he and
others in the industry “saw great opportunity to create something useful out of
the leftover by-product from industrial canola oil processing, which is why
this project was funded under the Growing Forward 2 Canola Cluster.
“We can extract all
sorts of things such as starches, proteins, and oils from plant materials to
make plastics, but I am particularly interested in proteins from canola meal in
this research project."
The bioplastic he developed has attributes similar to other plant-based bio-products; it can stretch, it doesn’t deform in certain temperatures, and in some cases, it biodegrades.
One challenge with some protein polymers is their sensitivity to moisture, so his team recently discovered a formula and technique to make soy and canola protein polymers water-resistant by "wrapping" them in another polymer.
The team was also able to add an anti-microbial compound to the mix, which not only made the resulting bioplastic able to prevent nasty bacteria such as E. coli from growing – but also, depending on how much was added, could change the porosity of the film.
