txchnologist:Care To Try On A Pork-Rind Sweater? For most people, thinking of a favorite sweater l
txchnologist: Care To Try On A Pork-Rind Sweater? For most people, thinking of a favorite sweater likely brings to mind descriptors like soft and cozy, warm but breathable. Maybe it’s made of a fine Merino wool or cashmere. Few are those who, when thinking of the sartorial pleasures of knitted clothing made of natural fibers, will conjure the effluvia of slaughterhouses. Philipp Stössel is one of the few. Stössel, a doctoral student researching biomaterials science, looks for useful materials that can be made from agricultural waste. Working with colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, he has been perfecting a process to make warm yarns out of animal byproducts like gelatin that can be knitted into clothing. The motivation to turn the skin, bones and tendons of vertebrates into a wearable fiber comes, the group writes, from an enormous supply of waste. “The raw material, namely, slaughterhouse waste, accumulates at about 10 million tons per year in the European Union and the global gelatin market is expected to reach 450,000 tons in 2018,” Stössel and his coauthors wrote recently in a study published in the journal Biomacromolecules. Learn more and see pictures of the process below. Keep reading -- source link
#materials science#science#biomaterials#fibers