Every year, in Europe, 90 million tons of food and 700 million tons of crops are wasted. From the point of view of a circular economy, such gigantic amount of undesired sub-products represents a completely unexploited opportunity for an industrial point of view, as well as a remarkable academic challenge.<br/>Agrimax project aims to create new valuable products by fully valorizing agricultural wastes (Figure 1). Disposable leftovers from cultivations such as tomato, potato, olives and cereals have the potential to be the sources of substances and molecules which could be employed for high value materials or chemicals. For example, 90-150 Mt of wheat bran are produced globally every year. Currently, it is mainly used as food additive and feed supplement, however, there is great interest toward innovative strategies for valorizing this residue through its transformation into added-value biomolecules. In particular, ferulic acid represents the most abundant phenolic acid in bran (0.2-15 g/Kg). The conjugated phenolic structure of ferulic acid is responsible for peculiar properties such as antioxidant and antibacterial activity. If properly introduced into a polymeric backbone, its aromatic character could confer rigidity to the macromolecular structure for the production of industrially relevant thermoplastic materials.<br/>Here we will report our current advances in the recovery of ferulic acid from industrial bran. Furthermore, it will be chemically modified and polymerized, by means of sustainable procedures, for the synthesis of unsaturated and semi-aromatic polyesters suitable for packaging applications.<br/>

AGRIMAX project: valorization of ferulic acid from wheat bran to obtain bio-based materials for packaging applications

2019 Spring National Meeting

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