International. In the last two years, four European research centres (CNR-iPCF, Ssica, Tecnalia and Polieko) have been working together with three business associations (CONSERO, PCS, Assocomaplast) and five companies (IRIS, Tehnos, RDX, tuba and Lagrana) linked to the food and plastics industries in order to find more sustainable and renewable sources for the plastics industry.
The main objective of the European Leguval project is to valorize the by-products of the legume processing industry, which are currently discarded, so that they can be used to prepare plastic materials for agriculture, packaging and automotive applications.
Scientists say there is a growing urgency to develop new naturally occurring products and other innovative technologies that could help reduce widespread dependence on fossil fuels. Bio-ecological composites made up of bio fibres and bioplastics are new materials in the 21st century with enormous potential to solve environmental problems and uncertainty in the supply of crude oil.
Thanks to their chemical and multifunctional properties, pulses provide societies with various services, such as a source of products to feed humans and animals, fibers, biomass, biofuels and chemicals.
Leguval has set out to valorize legume products by extracting their proteins and fiber so that they can be used as raw materials in the development of packaging materials and bioplastics for agricultural use, and the remaining biomass as a source of biogas.
The protein-based films/compounds of legumes would allow the packaging to be discarded in composting plants or used to produce biogas. Similarly, in agricultural applications plastics produced from proteins will be able to remain in the soil as a source of biodegradable nitrogen.
This project opens several lines of research in the field of vegetable protein. In fact, the oxygen permeability properties of plastic films made of coated proteins have shown that protein-based coating solutions exhibit excellent barrier properties against oxygen and against low- or mid-range relative humidity, on par with the oxygen barrier properties of some synthetic plastic materials.
