Commercial foamed materials used in packaging, wound care and hygiene products are today produced mostly from fossil-based raw materials. From a sustainability perspective, foams for various applications should be based on renewable materials. The hemicellulose arabinoxylan can be extracted from barley husk, today an agricultural by-product. Characterization of the extracted hemicellulose gave a composition consisting mainly of 62.1% xylose, 26.2% arabinose, and 10.5% glucose, giving an Ara/Xyl ratio of 0.42. The arabinoxylan also contained 9 wt.% lignin. Arabinoxylan foam was produced using a microcellular batch foaming process. The gas, here scCO2, dissolves by diffusion into the polymer and when the pressure is released forms foam cells inside the material. The morphology of the foams produced are determined by several factors, such as amount of gas dissolved in the polymer and heat. Foaming was performed at set temperatures (120°C, 130°C, 140°C, 150°C, 160°C, and 170°C) and solubilization time was 2 hours with a CO2 pressure at 10MPa. Arabinoxylan foams could be produced at temperatures above 150°C.

Microcellular foaming of arabinoxylan with scCO2

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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