Overview

An estimated 2.3Mn tons of non-biodegradable plastic microbeads are produced every year for use in a wide range of products and applications, eg paints, personal care products, abrasives, bio-catalysis and many more. Plastic microbeads accumulate in the environment, eventually finding their way into the human food supply chain, with estimates of more than 250,000 tons of microplastics enter the oceans every year and three times as much ending up contaminating agricultural soil.

Professor Davide Mattia will report on the continuous manufacturing of biodegradable cellulose microbeads as a sustainable alternative to primary microplastics and share learning experiences of transitioning from academic research to product commercialisation.

Speaker

Davide Mattia, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Design, University of Bath

Davide, FIChemE, CEng, is Professor of Chemical Engineering and Deputy Dean in the Faculty of Engineering and Design at the University of Bath. He earned an MEng in Materials Engineering in 2002 from the University ‘Federico II, Napoli, Italy, and a PhD in Materials Engineering from Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA, in 2007. He joined Bath in 2008 as a Lecturer and was promoted to a full Professor in 2016.

His current research focuses on using membranes to address environmental challenges, including the sustainable manufacturing of materials and the removal of organic micropollutants from water. He is a past Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow, holds an EPSRC Established Career Fellowship in Water Engineering and is PI on the £9Mn EPSRC Programme Grant SynHiSel on highly selective membranes.

He has authored more than 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals and holds several patents on membrane-related inventions. He is the co-founder of Naturbeads Ltd. a start-up manufacturing biodegradable cellulose microbeads as a replacement for plastic microparticles used in a wide range of products.

The material presented in this webinar has not been peer-reviewed. Any opinions are the presenter’s own and do not necessarily represent those of IChemE or the Sustainability Special Interest Group. The information is given in good faith but without any liability on the part of IChemE.

Webinar recording