Green Composites from Ionic Liquid-Assisted Processing of Sustainable Resources: A Brief Overview

Abstract

The massive use of synthetic, petroleum-based polymeric composites has disturbed the fragile environmental equilibrium of our planet. Composites made solely from polysaccharides can offer unique intrinsic properties such as renewability, biodegradability, easy availability, eco-friendliness, facile processing, flexibility, and exciting physico-mechanical characteristics. The development of green processing of lignocellulosic materials and bio-based polymers such as cellulose, starch, chitin, and chitosan, the most abundant biorenewable materials on earth, is urgent from the perspectives of both environmental protection and sustainability in materials industries. Recently, the enormous potential of ionic liquids (ILs) as an alternative to ecologically harmful conventional organic solvents has been well recognized. Presently, a wide range of pronounced approaches have been explored to further improve the performance of ionic liquid-based processing of polysaccharides for green composite manufacturing. This review presents recent technological developments in which the advantages of ionic liquids as a dissolution medium for polysaccharides for production of plethora of green composites have been gradually realized.

Ionic liquid pretreatment at high solids loading: A clean approach for fabrication of renewable resource based particulate composites

“…Although, researchers have conducted the high biomass loading pretreatment of lignocellulosic materials for enzymatic hydrolysis and subsequent bioethanol production, but none to date have utilized the regenerated fibrous material after high solids loading IL pretreatment for fabrication of lignocellulosic based composite board. Therefore, implication of this approach could add a new dimension to our previous studies in which some promising results of IL pretreatment for fabrication of biomass based composites were obtained.…”

Ionic liquids assisted processing of renewable resources for the fabrication of biodegradable composite materials

“…30 Thus, the utilization of non-food lignocellulosic waste from various agro-industries for the production of high value composite materials could be an attractive approach instead of creating pollution problems. 31 Sustainability in composites science depends upon not only the assortment of renewable, or environmentally benign raw materials for their manufacture, but also on the development of mild pretreatment methods that avoid the use and production of hazardous substances to minimize their environmental impact. 32 The critical challenge to extend the novel applications of biopolymers and lignocellulose for manufacturing biocomposite materials is to overcome the strong inter-and intra-molecular hydrogen bonding which lead to its recalcitrant nature.…”