Due to the necessity of satisfying our needs more and more from renewable resources in the future, polysaccharides as a biogenic, very easily recyclable polymeric material is moving into focus, especially for high-tech applications. Besides cellulose and cellulose derived polymers, also a large number of further polysaccharides are gaining increasing interest in the last decade both from academic research as well as from industry. In this talk I will outline recent efforts on using chitosan and chitosan simplex materials as novel flame retardants and wet strength additives in the design of functional paper-based materials. In a first example outlined, we have studied the use of a simplex-system consisting of phytic acid and chitosan, respectively. The latter is transferred in simple one-step coating procedure onto paper substrates. So-prepared functional paper possess self-extinguishing properties and depending on the type of paper used as well as the concentration of the biogenic flame retardant, mechanical properties were well-preserved. In a second example, we combine chitosan with different negatively charged biopolymers as novel wet-strength additives. The latter property is of utmost importance for a large number of different paper grades. We can show that relative wet-strengths up to 20% can be easily achieved by either wet-end application or by surface application of the simplex, respectively. The type of application, i.e. off-line versus online, does not impact the relative wet strength of paper derived, as such this strategy can be applied under various external conditions.

Application of chitosan-simplexes: From biogenic paper wet-strength to flame retardancy

2019 Spring National Meeting

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