Technological watch

Revalorization of Coffee Residues: Advances in the Development of Eco-Friendly Biobased Potential Food Packaging

One of the main limitations in the creation of bioplastics is their large-scale development, referred to as the industrial-scale processing of plastics. For this reason, bioplastic engineering emerges as one of the main objectives of researchers, who are attempting to create not only more environmentally friendly but also sustainable, low-cost, and less polluting materials. This review presents the advances in the development of biodegradable and compostable films/containers using eco-friendly components of by-products of the coffee industry, such as coffee flour (CF), coffee mucilage (CM), coffee husks (CH), coffee silverskin (CS), and spent coffee grounds (SCGs), and a brief review of the common industrial processing techniques for the production of food packaging, including extrusion, compression molding, injection molding, and laboratory-scale techniques such as solvent casting. Finally, this review presents various advances in the area that can be scalable or applicable to different products using by-products generated from the coffee industry, taking into account the limitations and drawbacks of using a biomaterial.

Publication date: 26/06/2023

Author: Josué D. Hernández-Varela

Reference: doi: 10.3390/polym15132823

MDPI (polymers)

      

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870292.