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Bioplastics 2016
November 10-11, 2016
Volume 7 Issue 6(Suppl) J Bioremediat Biodegrad
ISSN: 2155-6199 JBRBD, an open access journal
conferenceseries .com
November 10-11, 2016 Alicante, Spain
International Conference onSustainable Bioplastics
Sarah Montes et al., J Bioremediat Biodegrad 2016, 7:6(Suppl)
Keratin-based biomaterials
Sarah Montes, Itxaso Azcune, Germán Cabañero, Hans Grande and Ibon Odriozola.
Materials Division, IK4-CIDETEC, Spain
C urrently, there is an increasing interest in the development of environmental friendly materials obtained from renewable
resources. Poultry industry generates huge amounts of feather waste each year. Chicken feathers have high level of keratin
content (up to 90%), a structural fibrous protein, which can become a suitable bio-resource of raw materials. Isolation of
keratin protein from chicken feathers can be carried out by using different reducing agents which break down disulphide and
hydrogen bonds of the keratin fibres to obtain useful materials. Other authors have combined feathers with reducing agents
and plasticizers during melt blending for producing films with poor mechanical properties. In the present work, we show
the use of keratin as raw material for the preparation of a fully bio-derived bioplastic by conventional processing techniques
such as melt blending. Chicken feathers were processed by this technique together with suitable plasticizers and biobased
plastics. The resulting materials were characterized in terms of thermal, viscoelastic and mechanical properties, showing their
promising potential of substitution of conventional plastics.
Biography
Sarah Montes has done her Degree in Polymer Chemistry and Master in Applied Chemistry and Polymers from the University of The Basque Country. Currently,
she is a scientific research at IK4-CIDETEC specialized in the development of polymeric composites/nanocomposites, especially biobased polymers and in the
characterization of polymeric materials. She has been the coordinator of the ECLIPSE European Project. She is the author and co-author of 5 scientific papers
and 2 patents.