Some Practical Aspects of Renewable Nanomaterials in Food Packaging

The indiscriminate use of plastic packaging films and ecological problems has led to development of biodegradable packaging. These materials are essentially derived from either agricultural raw materials (cellulose, starch and protein) or marine food processing industry wastes (chitin/chitosan). Altghough these materials have problems such as poor mechanical and barrier properties, but applying nanocomposites has overcame these problems to a large extent. Nanocomposites also have other functions such as antimicrobial activity, enzyme immobilization, biosensors, etc. In this paper, some aspects of the potential applications of chitosan, xanthan gum, and lignin in obtaining antimicrobial and antioxidant packaging have been studied. One of the chitosan applications is useing in hydrogels. . Therefore matrices based on covalently cross-linked chitosan hydrogels is produced. Covalent cross-linking leads to the formation of a permanent network allowing drug release by controlled diffusion and enhancing the mechanical properties of the hydrogel. According to the results, release of vanillin from chitosan nanocomposite hydrogels and lignin/ xanthan hydrogels was delayed. I In studies on lignin it was shown that the role of lignin as an antimicrobial and antioxidant agent in the polyolefin composition depends on the type of lignin and its properties.