Hydrogel Products from Food Waste

Abstract

Dietary fiber provides organisms with key nutrients and allows for transport of small molecules and metabolic products. As an inspiration to design materials, dietary fiber is biocompatible, sustainable, and positively influences microbial communities. In this work, biopolymers are extracted from fibrous food waste to mimic the functionality of dietary fiber and are used to fabricate bioinspired composite materials. Specifically, biopolymers, such as cellulose and pectin, will be used to develop tunable hydrogels that promote microbe interactions, support therapeutic transport of probiotics, adsorption of uremic toxins, and an enhanced environment for plant growth. This research will provide a fundamental understanding of the effects of biopolymer-based materials derived from fibrous food waste on microbial communities. The extraction of biopolymers from mixed food waste will create a sustainable platform and is a novel approach to generating commercially available materials. Currently, cellulose microgel beads that are fabricated using the dropping technique suffer from irregularity and mechanical variability, which limit their translation to biomedical applications. To counteract this variability, the coagulation behavior of cellulose/salt solutions is investigated in the fabrication of microgel beads via the dropping technique. Additionally, by utilizing these feedstocks to produce drug delivery vessels in the form of microgels, this research provides new fundamental understanding of the interactions between food products like cellulose and small molecule toxins. Finally, hydrogel seed coatings derived from the peel of an orange and inoculated with microbial communities will provide new understanding of biofertilization and microbial delivery to enhance the growth of plants via a sustainable platform.