ANTIMICROBIAL NANOMATERIALS FOR FOOD PACKAGING APPLICATIONS

ABSTRACT: Food packaging industry presents one of the fastest growing industries nowadays. New trends in this industry, which include reducing food as well as packaging waste, improved preservation of food and prolonged shelf-life together with substitution of petrochemical sources with renewable ones are leading to development of this industrial area in diverse directions. This multidisciplinary challenge is set up both in front of food and material scientists. Nanotechnology is recently answering to these challenges, with different solutions-from improvements in materials properties to active packaging solutions, or both at the same time. Incorporation of nanoparticles into polymer matrix and preparation of hybrid materials is one of the methods of modification of polymer properties. Nano scaled materials with antimicrobial properties can act as active components when added into polymer, thereby leading to prolonged protective function of pristine food packaging material. This paper presents a review in the field of antimicrobial nanomaterials for food packaging in turn of technology, application and regulatory issues

The use of artificial neural networks for mathematical modeling of the effect of composition and production conditions on the properties of PVC floor coverings

The application of PVC floor coverings is strongly connected with their end-use properties, which depend on the composition and processing conditions. It is very difficult to estimate the proper influence of the production parameters on the characteristics of PVC floor coverings due to their complex composition and various preparation procedures. The effect of different processing variables (such as time of bowling, temperature of bowling and composition of PVC plastisol) on the mechanical properties of PVC floor coverings was investigated. The influence of different input parameters on the mechanical properties was successfully determined using an artificial neural network with an optimized number of hidden neurons. The Garson and Yoon models were applied to calculate and describe the variable contributions in the artificial neural networks. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. III 45022

Polymerization of organized monomers

The current explanations of olefin and vinyl monomer polymerization propose that monomer molecules are successively added one by one to the growing polymer chain. This may be true if the monomer molecules exist as individual species in a polymerizing system, e.g. in dilute solutions of monomer. There are cases, however, in which monomer molecules are organized: bulk liquid monomer, solid monomer, a monomer monolayer adsorbed on a support, etc. Various supra-molecular species and particles of monomer exist in such cases. In the 1960-ties, Semenov, Kargin and Kabanov proposed a theory of organized monomer polymerization. In the last 25 years, our research group has further developed and applied that theory to various polymerizing systems: the radical polymerization of compressed ethene gas, the radical polymerization of liquid methyl methacrylate, olefin polymerization by transition metals and by Al-based catalysts. An outline of the main achievements are presented in this article