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OF EXCELLENCE
IN INTERNATIONAL
MEETINGS
YEARS
Journal of EnvironmentalWaste Management and Recycling | Volume 2 Earth Science 2019
May 22-23, 2019 | Rome, Italy
EARTH SCIENCE,
RECYCLING & SPACE TECHNOLOGY
7th International Conference on
FOODWASTE VALORISATION IN BIOFILMS AND BIOCOMPOSITE PRODUCTIONS
Bronco Simona 1, Bertoldo Monica2, Bramanti Emilia 3, Cinelli Patrizia4 , De Monte Cristina1, Diciotti
Marco1, Lazzeri Andrea4 and Ricci Lucia1
1 Istituto per i Processi Chimico-Fisici CNR, Italy
2 Istituto di Sintesi Organica e Fotoreattività CNR, Italy
3 Istituto di Chimica dei Composti Organometallici CNR, Italy
4 Dipartimento Ingegneria Civile ed Industriale, Università di Pisa, Italy
The roadmap to a resource-efficient Europe identified food as a key sector needing improvements. Indeed,
approximately one third of all food produced globally is wasted every year throughout the whole food
chain-from farmers to consumers. To extract the significant amounts of valuable compounds contained in
those wastes that are not currently valorised, the research is focused on a possible combination of affordable
and flexible processing technologies for the extraction and the use of traditional transformation approaches
to reduce the amounts normally discarded with costs of disposal and generating a significant environment im-
pact. In the last five years in our research group, researchers are focusing the attention on the processing of on
cellulosic-fibres, proteins and other molecules extracted from different food wastes such as tomato and potato
leaves, legumes in the framework of two European projects, specifically LEGUVAL during the 7FP e AGRIMAX
founded by BBI-2016 still in progress. Our activities inside LEGUVAL project concerned firstly the denaturation
of protein extracted from legumes to be used as a starting compounds for the preparation of materials in a dry
process (in mixture with polymer matrices). The residual fraction resulting from the extraction process, which is
enriched in fibers, was used as an additive in the production of compostable composites. The same approach
was continued in AGRIMAX project with the aim to demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of these
new applications for the agricultural value chains by applying biorefinery processes. In the project, they carried
out a deep characterization of potato juice extracted from potato peels. This work was then combined with a
detailed investigation of the denaturation behavior of proteins from peas and the denaturated material was
used as matrix for the preparation of composites in the presence as potato juice as filler.
Bronco Simona et al., J Environ Waste Management and Recycling 2019, Volume 2
Bronco Simona received her Master’s in Chemistry at the University of Pisa in 1994 and her PhD on Natural Science/Chemistry at ETH
Zurich in Switzerland in 1997 in Homogeneous Catalysis. She has a permanent position as Researcher at Institute for the Chemical
and Physical Processes at CNR in Pisa, Italy. She has over 20 years of international experience in polymer science including design,
synthesis and characterization of polymeric materials with controlled architecture, morphology and composition on a nano or mi-
crometric scale. One of the main topics of her research is focused on the valorisation of food wastes for the development of biofilms
and biocomposites to be used in agricultural and packaging application. She is author of more than 50 scientific papers, chapters
in books and has three patents.
BIOGRAPHY