Revista de ciencia e ingeniería textil

Alternatives for Fungal Textiles Made from Bread Waste that have the Properties of Leather

Abstract

Bernd Nowack

Two of the most pressing environmental issues on a global scale are food waste and fashion industry pollution. The feasibility of producing an alternative textile material with leather-like properties from fungal biomass cultivated on bread waste was investigated in order to alleviate the issues posed by food waste and contribute to sustainable fashion. In a submerged cultivation method, the filamentous fungus Rhizopus delemar was successfully grown on waste bread, and the fungal biomass was treated with chestnut wood's vegetable tannin. OM, SEM, and AFM showed how the tannin treatment affected the hyphae, while NMR and FTIR demonstrated that tannin interacts with fungal biomass. TGA analysis was used to measure thermal stability. Sheets of hyphae were prepared using the wet-laid method commonly used for papermaking. As a posttreatment, glycerol and/or a biobased binder were applied to some of the sheets. In total, three of the manufactured materials had characteristics similar to those of genuine leather. After being treated with glycerol alone, sheets made from untreated biomass had a tensile strength of 7.7 MPa and an elongation at break of 5%. Though sheets from untreated biomass and tannin treated biomass with both glycerol and fastener medicines prompted rigidities of 7.1 MPa and 6.9 MPa, and the stretching at break of 12% and 17%, individually. After the binder treatment, the sheet's increased hydrophobicity helped keep the sheet's absorbed glycerol inside, preserving its flexibility when moist. These results show that fungal sheets made from bread waste have a lot of potential as eco-friendly materials with leather-like properties.