Production of sustainable bioplastic materials from wheat gluten proteins

Petroleum-based products are creating a number of environmental problems. Petroleum and oil resources are also threatened to become depleted due to the massive utilization. Therefore, it is important to replace the petroleum-based products with products that are instead derived from renewable resources e.g. the replacement of petro-based plastics with bioplastics can be a good option. Wheat gluten proteins might be a promising solution to use for production of bioplastics. Wheat gluten is a cheap by-product from the bio-ethanol industry, thereby largely available and beside that, these proteins have interesting viscoelastic and thermoplastic properties. Gliadin and glutenin i.e. the two major types of gluten protein and their behavior when used to produce bio-based material are discussed in this paper