<br/>Silkworm silk is a natural fibre that has been used for thousands of years in textiles, it is mainly composed for two proteins, sericin (<i>~25%) and fibroin (~75%). Silk production generates a large amount of waste as: sericin in wastes water of degummed process; and lower quality fibrous that represents about 30% of the silk cocoons weight, that cannot be utilized in the textile industry. Both wastes are </i>attractive for alternative uses, such as tissue engineering, drug release systems, food packing, biosensing, and biotechnology due to its biocompatibility and renewability properties. These proteins offer a great opportunity to be explored for develop advanced materials such as films, scaffolds and nonwovens for various biomedical applications. Recent advanced on our efforts on valorizing sericulture waste streams will be discussed in this presentation. We successfully isolated both proteins and utilized different types of nanocellulose as reinforcing agent. Regenerated silk fibroin was reinforced with different ratios of cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) and nonwovens were obtained via electrospinning technique. On the other hand, sericin was blend with nanofibrillated cellulose with different chemical compositions in order to produce mechanically stable sericin-based scaffolds. The resulting nanocellulose-proteins blends were characterized to assess the effect of the nanocellulose addition in terms of rheology of the suspensions, as well as thermo-mechanical, crystallinity, porosity and swelling properties of the composites.

Novel materials from silk proteins and nanocellulose blends- Valorizing sericulture production sidetreams

2019 Spring National Meeting

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