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Carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRPs) have become increasingly widespread across a remarkable range of industries thanks to their unique combination of strength, lightness and durability [...].Carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRPs) have become increasingly widespread across a remarkable range of industries thanks to their unique combination of strength, lightness and durability [...].

Fish waste is attracting growing interest as a new raw material for biopolymer production in different application fields, mainly in food packaging, with significant economic and environmental advantages. This review paper summarizes the recent advances in the valorization of fish waste for the preparation of biopolymers for food packaging applications. The issues related to fishery industry waste and fish by-catch and the potential for re-using these by-products in a circular economy approach have been presented in detail. Then, all the biopolymer typologies derived from fish waste with potential applications in food packaging, such as muscle proteins, collagen, gelatin, chitin/chitosan, have been described. For each of them, the recent applications in food packaging, in the last five years, have been overviewed with an emphasis on smart packaging applications. Despite the huge industrial potential of fish industry by-products, most of the reviewed applications are still at lab-scale. Therefore, the technological challenges for a reliable exploitation and recovery of several potentially valuable molecules and the strategies to improve the barrier, mechanical and thermal performance of each kind of biopolymer have been analyzed.

Marine pollution is one of the biggest environmental problems, mainly due to single-use or disposable plastic waste fragmenting into microplastics (MPs) and nanoplastics (NPs) and entering oceans from the coasts together with human-made MPs. A rapidly growing worry concerning environmental and human safety has stimulated research interest in the potential risks induced by the chemicals associated with MPs/NPs. In this framework, the present review analyzes the recent advances in adsorption and desorption studies of different contaminants species, both organic and metallic, on MPs made of Poly(Ethylene terephthalate). The choice of PET is motivated by its great diffusion among plastic items and, unfortunately, also in marine plastic pollution. Due to the ubiquitous presence of PET MPS/NPs, the interest in its role as a vector of contaminants has abruptly increased in the last three years, as demonstrated by the very high number of recent papers on sorption studies in different environments. The present review relies on a chemical engineering approach aimed at providing a deeper overview of both the sorption mechanisms of organic and metal contaminants to PET MPs/NPs and the most used adsorption kinetic models to predict the mass transfer process from the liquid phase to the solid adsorbent.

Fish industry waste is attracting growing interest for the production of environmentally friendly materials for several different applications, due to the potential for reduced environmental impact and increased socioeconomic benefits. Recently, the application of fish industry waste for the synthesis of value-added materials and energy storage systems represents a feasible route to strengthen the overall sustainability of energy storage product lines. This review focused on an in-depth outlook on the advances in fish byproduct-derived materials for energy storage devices, including lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), sodium-ion (NIBs) batteries, lithium-sulfur batteries (LSBs), supercapacitors and protein batteries. For each of these, the latest applications were presented together with approaches to improve the electrochemical performance of the obtained materials. By analyzing the recent literature on this topic, this review aimed to contribute to further advances in the sustainability of energy storage devices.

The adsorption studies of contaminants on microplastics (MPs) collected from the marine environment are very hard to carry out mainly due to the difficulties associated with both to filtration of MPs and separation from biofilm and organic matrices. In this work, MPs were produced by a top-down protocol from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles collected on the beach, thus already aged in the natural environment, and compared with engineered MPs obtained from PET pellets. Both types of MPs (size < 150 μm) were used to study the adsorption of amoxicillin, which is one of the most widely consumed antibiotics in the world and is found unchanged in the aquatic environment. The results of sorption kinetics and isotherm tests indicated that aged MPs absorbed a higher antibiotic content than unaged ones since the two kinds of microplastics had different specific surface areas. The experimental results were explained by analysing the thermodynamic affinity among amoxicillin and PET MPs and comparing it with several pharmaceuticals and other microplastics by evaluating Hansen’s solubility parameters (HSPs), which account for dispersive, polarizable and hydrogen bonding contributions to the overall cohesive energy of a compound. The possible interaction mechanism among amoxicillin and PET MPs, based on hydrogen bond interactions among the antibiotic and the ester groups of the polymer, was hypothesised. The results of adsorption tests demonstrated that PET MPs can be pollutant carriers with potential long-range transport in the aquatic environment.

The current demand for lightweight and high-performance structures leads to increasing applications of carbon fiber reinforced polymers, which is also made possible by novel production methods, automation with repeatable quality, the reduced cost of carbon fibers, out of autoclave processes such as resin transfer molding and resin infusion technologies, the re-use of waste fibers, development in preform technology, high-performance, fast-curing resins, etc [...]

This work contributes to fill one of the gaps regarding nanoplastic interactions with biological systems by producing polyethylene terephthalate (PET) model nanoplastics, similar to those found in the marine environment, by means of a fast top-down approach based on mechanical fragmentation. Their size distribution and morphology were characterized by laser diffraction and atomic force microscopy (AFM). Their autofluorescence was studied by spectrofluorimetry and fluorescence imaging, being a key property for the evaluation of their interaction with biota. The emission spectra of label-free nanoplastics were comparable with those of PET nanoplastics labeled with Nile red. Finally, the suitability of label-free nanoplastics for biological studies was assessed by in vitro exposure with Mytilus galloprovincialis hemolymphatic cells in a time interval up to 6 h. The nanoplastic internalization into these cells, known to be provided with phagocytic activity, was assessed by fluorescence microscopy. The obtained results underlined that the autofluorescence of the model PET nanoplastics produced in the laboratory was adequate for biological studies having the potential to overcome the disadvantages commonly associated with several fluorescent dyes, such as the tendency to also stain other organic materials different from plastics, to form aggregates due to intermolecular interactions at high concentrations with a consequent decrease in fluorescence intensity, and to dye desorption from nanoparticles. The results of the autofluorescence study provide an innovative approach for plastic risk assessment.

Micro- and nanoplastic pollutants are among the major environmental challenges, and are exacerbated by the continuous degradation of growing amounts of plastic debris in the aquatic environment. The purpose of this study was to investigate the morphology of micro/nanoplastics (M/NPs) formed from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) by mechanical degradation in an aquatic environment, which mimics the processes in the natural environment well, and to determine the impact of these particles on model aquatic organisms. To this end, M/NPs were obtained by ball milling in an aqueous medium and the effect of milling length on particle size and shape was investigated. The particles obtained in an environment simulating natural conditions were irregularly shaped, and those of nanometric size tended to form aggregates of various shapes. The ingestion and toxicity of PET M/NPs to freshwater zooplankton were then assessed. Daphnia magna and Thamnocephalus platyurus were used in a series of acute ecotoxicity tests, by exposure to M/NP dispersions at environmentally realistic concentrations (0.01–1.0 mg/L), as well as at very high concentrations (100–1000 mg/L). A significant uptake of PET particles by both types of invertebrates was observed, and the M/NPs were mainly concentrated in the digestive tracts of the crustaceans. However, they did not cause acute toxicity to the tested organisms or a reduction in their swimming activity, even at concentrations as high as 1000 mg/L.

[10] in the paper entitled “Out-of-plane permeability evaluation of carbon fiber preforms by ultrasonic wave propagation” present a novel experimental set-up, based on ultrasonic wave propagation, for the determination of the out-of-plane permeability of carbon fiber reinforcements, which is the dominant property in the infusion of large and flat panels with a high thickness. [15], in the paper entitled “Effects of ultrasonic bending vibration introduced by an L-shaped ultrasonic rod on the microstructure and properties of a 1060 aluminum alloy strip formed by twin-roll casting”, present a new type of ultrasonic generator to assist the process of continuous casting and rolling of aluminum alloy. [16], in the paper entitled “Effect of ultrasonic bending vibration introduced by the L-shaped ultrasonic rod on solidification structure and segregation of large 2A14 ingots”, propose a new design of L- shaped ceramic ultrasonic wave guide rod for the introduction of ultrasonic bending vibration during the solidification of the 2A14 aluminum alloy.

Fish collagen garnered significant academic and commercial focus in the last decades featuring prospective applications in a variety of health-related industries, including food, medicine, pharmaceutics, and cosmetics. Due to its distinct advantages over mammalian-based collagen, including the reduced zoonosis transmission risk, the absence of cultural-religious limitations, the cost-effectiveness of manufacturing process, and its superior bioavailability, the use of collagen derived from fish wastes (i.e., skin, scales) quickly expanded. Moreover, by-products are low cost and the need to minimize fish industry waste’s environmental impact paved the way for the use of discards in the development of collagen-based products with remarkable added value. This review summarizes the recent advances in the valorization of fish industry wastes for the extraction of collagen used in several applications. Issues related to processing and characterization of collagen were presented. Moreover, an overview of the most relevant applications in food industry, nutraceutical, cosmetics, tissue engineering, and food packaging of the last three years was introduced. Lastly, the fish-collagen market and the open technological challenges to a reliable recovery and exploitation of this biopolymer were discussed.