Biorefinery concept in the meat industry: From slaughterhouse biowastes to superaborbent materials
View/ Open
Date
2023-09Author
Álvarez Castillo, Estefanía
Bengoechea, Carlos
Guerrero, Antonio
Metadata
Show full item record
Chemical Engineering Journal 471 : (2023) // Article ID 144564
Abstract
The expansion of food production has a large environmental impact in many ways. More specifically, 30–40% of
total food production is lost as wastes and/or by-products before it reaches the market. In this sense, blood is an
inevitable by-product in the meat industry that typically consists of 3–5% of the total weight of the animal. The
dry organic matter present in blood is mostly protein, which can be employed more efficiently as raw material in
the development of biodegradable materials. In the present manuscript, the blood collected after slaughtering of
Iberian pigs was centrifuged and the upper (i.e., plasma) and bottom (i.e., red cells) layers were separated. Three
freeze-dried fractions were characterized and evaluated on terms of their potential in the field of bioplastics:
whole blood, plasma and bottom layer. Albumin was detected clearly in the plasma fraction, while globulins in
red cells. After their characterization samples were mixed thoroughly with glycerol and injection molded at
120 ◦C. Special applications may be proposed for every fraction (i.e., whole blood, plasma or red cells), as the
materials displayed different properties depending on the raw material employed. Thus, plasma resulted in
materials with a greater deformability and swelling capacity during immersion, resulting in superabsorbent
materials when processed at milder conditions (80 ◦C)