Functional Nanomaterials from Waste and Low-Value Natural Products: A Technological Approach Level

Low- and negative-value (waste) products represent a valuable resource. Its use as a source for the fabrication of high value materials represents a lucrative pathway to increasing sustainability and decreasing the economic cost of various industries. Thermochemical methods for the valorization of biowaste and low-value natural products are simple and cheap yet sufficiently efficient to deliver significant economic benefits. Plasma-based methods represent another family of technologies for waste-to-value conversion. The nanostructure nucleation and growth in plasmas involve a complex set of physical and chemical processes that occur in bulk plasma and on surfaces. The choice between these two types of technology assumes a complex optimization that takes into account several factors including the cost of precursors; initial outlay and operating cost of equipment; the cost of labor; the cost of production engineering including the research and development efforts for designing the industrial technology, which is typically higher for the plasma-based systems, and so on. In this article a technology level comparison of thermochemical and plasma-based techniques for the valorization of raw and waste biomass, where the intent is to use the resulting products for environmental remediation, energy storage, optoelectronics, and biomedical applications, is presented.