Part 2 the 2021 TAPPI Nano Webinar Series – Circular Packaging Products from Polysaccharides

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Webinar season is in full effect! The 2021 TAPPI Nano Webinar Series – Circular Packaging Products from Polysaccharides webinar held on Tuesday, April 27th 9AM – 10AM (EST), will evaluate the strong drive to discover and develop alternatives to conventional plastics that offer the ability to be manufactured and used in a circular manner. In a circular economy, as opposed to a linear one, materials are derived from renewable resources or recycled content, and at the end of life, they are able to be circulated back into production via a chemical, physical or biological pathway. A critical need exists to develop such materials for plastic packaging, which represents the largest contributor to unrecyclable or difficult-to-recycle plastic waste.

This webinar describes innovations in production of barrier films and coatings suitable for food or pharmaceutical packaging, based on combinations of cellulose- and chitin-based nanomaterials.  Cellulose nanocrystals, CNCs, and chitin nanofibers or nanocrystals (ChNFs, ChNCs), are oppositely-charged, water-dispersible fibers that could form the basis of a platform of renewable, high-performance materials. Challenges to industrial implementation and approaches to overcome these will also be analyzed. In addition, this talk will review several other projects ongoing at the Georgia Tech Renewable Bioproducts Institute in the area of circular approaches to packaging based on biomass-derived materials.

We will cover:

• Identifying challenges and constraints in current flexible barrier packaging
• Recognizing the opportunity available for utilizing cellulose and chitin-derived biomass nanofibers/crystals for barrier packaging
• Identifying challenges in manufacturing barrier flexible packaging from biomass comprehension
• Explaining why cellulose and chitin charge and length affect formation barrier structions
• Explaining basic structure-property relationships between cellulose and chiftin processing, film deposition conditions and barrier properties

Webinar attendance is free and open to everyone, but registration is required. Reserve your space today!

Meet Presenter:

Dr. Carson Meredith
Chief Editor for the journal Emergent Materials (Springer) 
Executive Director of Georgia Tech’s Renewable Bioproducts Institute

Dr. Carson Meredith received a BS degree in Chemical Engineering from Georgia Tech (1993)and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas, Austin (1998). He was a postdoc at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) from 1998 to 2000, and joined the faculty in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech in 2000. In his early career he was instrumental in developing the field of high-throughput or combinatorial polymer science, and applied this discovery methodology to problems ranging from optimizing cell function on tissue engineering scaffolds to membranes for fuel cells. His current research interests include fundamentals of colloid and polymer science as applied to bioinspired materials and renewable and sustainable materials from biomass. For example his group has pioneered chitin-cellulose derived alternative packaging materials that could be substitutes for current plastics. Dr. Meredith is a Chief Editor for the journal Emergent Materials (Springer).  In addition, he serves as the Executive Director of Georgia Tech’s Renewable Bioproducts Institute, one of eleven interdisciplinary research institutes on the GT campus.

Register today for 2021 TAPPI Nano Webinar Series – Circular Packaging Products from Polysaccharides webinar held on Tuesday, April 27th 9AM – 10AM (EST).

Webinar attendance is free and open to everyone, but registration is required. Reserve your space today!