Péricles Lopes Sant’Ana
State University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
Biography
The change of habit and the increase in consumerism in the last decades have led to technological innovations and consequently to the greater production of consumer products, which has generated an increase in the production of packaging. However, its disorderly disposal generates a large volume of solid waste, which is associated with the environmental impact. Concern for this situation, we ought to develop alternative means to reduce such impacts and may highlight the reuse and recycling of packaging. Plastics represent the largest share in the value of Brazilian packaging production, corresponding to 38.85% of the total. The employment level of the packaging industry reached 216973 jobs in June 2017. The plastic industry is the one that most employs, totaling in June 2017, 115307 formal jobs, corresponding to 53.14% of the total jobs in the sector. The plastics sector accounts for 59.58% of total imports. With respect to the results obtained in the last 10 years of research, the reuse of recycled commercial polymers by plasma surface treatment is emphasized. Then, it is possible to change the character of wetting of the polymers, being able to obtain high hydrophobic or high hydrophilic surfaces, maintaining very smoothness, high optical transparency in the visible region (up to 80%) and improving gas barrier (down to 1 g/m2day) mainly for PET and LDPE, which makes the plasma immersion treatment interesting for the food packaging
Abstract
Abstract : Plasma surface treatment of recycled polymers for food packaging