Open-Innovation in the Electrical and Electronic Industries: Engineered Bio-Fluid Compositions Are Paving the Way, and Testing Therewith

Engineered Biofluids are paving the way to industrialized and specifically produced and tailored functional fluids such as coolant and dielectric, high purity traceable media, for the electrical and electronic industries. Dielectric fluid compositions are commonly used in electrical devices, particularly in transformers. These liquids have the aim to isolate the various conductive elements of the device and to limit the heating of the equipment during its operation;in order to minimize, or maintain at higher power, the size of the device and to increase the lifespan of it. Concomitantly a number of bio and traditional processing advancements are made associated with pioneering process technologies which are outlined within the prime context of this paper. Enzyme Engineering and Cocktailing add “A New Dimension to Softer Greener Chem-Bio Approaches” which are referenced beyond curiosity purpose. Some of them are possibly “revolutionary” more than evolutionary. Testing has to evolve accordingly to appreciate the challenges ahead in semi-extreme conditions which are relevant to climate changes as well. A significant part of this orientation work addresses and exemplifies these necessary testing innovations, likely adaptable to smart and responsive connecting, and further down the line bigger data role and learning machine evolutionary concepts. One other innovative part of this exploratory work, is the influence that such illustrative localized testing, with integrated sensors/induced-tracers, and online interpretation, may have on the smart grid developments;whereby production, transmission, distribution and consumption of energy can be made more reliable, more effective and more predictive and can also have an impact on the performance, reliability and sustainability of the equipment itself. Those technologies and associated testing can support environmental, technological and societal awareness;helping to revert some trends being climate changes, fossil fuel preservation and other planetary challenges to maintain the overall and localized fundamental equilibriums.

Recent Strategies for the Development of Biosourced-Monomers, Oligomers and Polymers-Based Materials: A Review with an Innovation and a Bigger Data Focus

After setting the ground of the quantum innovation potential of biosourced entities and outlining the inventive spectrum of adjacent technologies that can derive from those, the current review highlights, with the support of Bigger Data approaches, and a fairly large number of articles, more than 250 and 10,000 patents, the following. It covers an overview of biosourced chemicals and materials, mainly biomonomers, biooligomers and biopolymers;these are produced today in a way that allows reducing the fossil resources depletion and dependency, and obtaining environmentally-friendlier goods in a leaner energy consuming society. A process with a realistic productivity is underlined thanks to the implementation of recent and specifically effective processes where engineered microorganisms are capable to convert natural non-fossil goods, at industrial scale, into fuels and useful high-value chemicals in good yield. Those processes, further detailed, integrate: metabolic engineering involving 1) system biology, 2) synthetic biology and 3) evolutionary engineering. They enable acceptable production yield and productivity, meet the targeted chemical profiles, minimize the consumption of inputs, reduce the production of by-products and further diminish the overall operation costs. As generally admitted the properties of most natural occurring biopolymers (e.g., starch, poly (lactic acid), PHAs.) are often inferior to those of the polymers derived from petroleum;blends and composites, exhibiting improved properties, are now successfully produced. Specific attention is paid to these aspects. Then further evidence is provided to support the important potential and role of products deriving from the biomass in general. The need to enter into the era of Bigger Data, to grow and increase the awareness and multidimensional role and opportunity of biosourcing serves as a conclusion and future prospects. Although providing a large reference database, this review is largely initiatory, therefore not mimicking previous classic reviews but putting them in a multiplying synergistic prospective.

A Review: On Smart Materials Based on Some Polysaccharides;within the Contextual Bigger Data, Insiders, “Improvisation” and Said Artificial Intelligence Trends

Smart Materials are along with Innovation attributes and Artificial Intelligence among the most used “buzz” words in all media. Central to their practical occurrence, many talents are to be gathered within new contextual data influxes. Has this, in the last 20 years, changed some of the essential fundamental dimensions and the required skills of the actors such as providers, users, insiders, etc.? This is a preliminary focus and prelude of this review. As an example, polysaccharide materials are the most abundant macromolecules present as an integral part of the natural system of our planet. They are renewable, biodegradable, carbon neutral with low environmental, health and safety risks and serve as structural materials in the cell walls of plants. Most of them are used, for many years, as engineering materials in many important industrial processes, such as pulp and papermaking and manufacture of synthetic textile fibres. They are also used in other domains such as conversion into biofuels and, more recently, in the design of processes using polysaccharide nanoparticles. The main properties of polysaccharides (e.g. low density, thermal stability, chemical resistance, high mechanical strength…), together with their biocompatibility, biodegradability, functionality, durability and uniformity, allow their use for manufacturing smart materials such as blends and composites, electroactive polymers and hydrogels which can be obtained 1) through direct utilization and/or 2) after chemical or physical modifications of the polysaccharides. This paper reviews recent works developed on polysaccharides, mainly on cellulose, hemicelluloses, chitin, chitosans, alginates, and their by-products (blends and composites), with the objectives of manufacturing smart materials. It is worth noting that, today, the fundamental understanding of the molecular level interactions that confer smartness to polysaccharides remains poor and one can predict that new experimental and theoretical tools will emerge to develop the necessary understanding of the structure-property-function relationships that will enable polysaccharide-smartness to be better understood and controlled, giving rise to the development of new and innovative applications such as nanotechnology, foods, cosmetics and medicine (e.g. controlled drug release and regenerative medicine) and so, opening up major commercial markets in the context of green chemistry.

Paving the High-Way to Sustainable, Value Adding Open-Innovation Integrating Bigger-Data Challenges: Three Examples from Bio-Ingredients to Robust Durable Applications of Electrochemical Impacts

A trilogy review, based on more than 300 references, is used to underline three challenges facing 1) the supply of sustainable, durable and protected biosourced ingredients such as lipids, 2) the accounting for valuable bio-by-products, such as whey proteins that have added-value potential removing their environmental weight and 3) the practical reliable synthetic biology and evolutionary engineering that already serve as a technology and science basis to expand from, such as for biopolymer growth. Bioresources, which are the major topic of this review, must provide answers to several major challenges related to health, food, energy or chemistry of tomorrow. They offer a wide range of ingredients which are available in trees, plants, grasses, vegetables, algae, milk, food wastes, animal manures and other organic wastes. Researches in this domain must be oriented towards a bio-sustainable-economy based on new valuations of the potential of those renewable biological resources. This will aim at the substitution of fossil raw materials with renewable raw materials to ensure the sustainability of industrial processes by providing bioproducts through innovative processes using for instance micro-organisms and enzymes (the so-called white biotechnology). The final stage objective is to manufacture high value-added products gifted with the right set of physical, chemical and biological properties leading to particularly innovative applications. In this review, three examples are considered in a green context open innovation and bigger data environment. Two of them (lipids antioxidants and milk proteins) concern food industry while the third (biomonomers and corresponding bioplastics and derivatives) relates to biomaterials industry. Lipids play a crucial role in the food industry, but they are chemically unstable and very sensitive to atmospheric oxidation which leads to the formation of numerous by-compounds which have adverse effects on lipids quality attributes and on the nutritive value of meat. To overcome this problem, natural antioxidants, with a positive impact on the safety and acceptability of the food system, have been discovered and evaluated. In the same context, milk proteins and their derivatives are of great interest. They can be modified by enzymatic means leading to the formation of by-products that are able to increase their functionality and possible applications. They can also produce bioactive peptides, a field with almost unlimited research potential. On the other hand, biosourced chemicals and materials, mainly biomonomers and biopolymers, are already produced today. Metabolic engineering tools and strategies to engineer synthetic enzyme pathways are developed to manufacture, from renewable feedstocks, with high yields, a number of monomer building-block chemicals that can be used to produce replacements to many conventional plastic materials. Through those three examples this review aims to highlight recent and important advancements in production, modification and applications of the studied bioproducts. Bigger data analysis and artificial intelligence may help reweight practical and theoretical observations and concepts in these fields;helping to cross the boarders of expert traditional exploration fields and sometime fortresses.

Potential Applications of Milk Fractions and Valorization of Dairy By-Products: A Review of the State-of-the-Art Available Data, Outlining the Innovation Potential from a Bigger Data Standpoint

The unique composition of milk makes this basic foodstuff into an exceptional raw material for the production of new ingredients with desired properties and diverse applications in the food industry. The fractionation of milk is the key in the development of those ingredients and products;hence continuous research and development on this field, especially various levels of fractionation and separation by filtration, have been carried out. This review focuses on the production of milk fractions as well as their particular properties, applications and processes that increase their exploitation. Whey proteins and caseins from the protein fraction are excellent emulsifiers and protein supplements. Besides, they can be chemically or enzymatically modified to obtain bioactive peptides with numerous functional and nutritional properties. In this context, valorization techniques of cheese-whey proteins, by-product of dairy industry that constitutes both economic and environmental problems, are being developed. Phospholipids from the milk fat fraction are powerful emulsifiers and also have exclusive nutraceutical properties. In addition, enzyme modification of milk phospholipids makes it possible to tailor emulsifiers with particular properties. However, several aspects remain to be overcome;those refer to a deeper understanding of the healthy, functional and nutritional properties of these new ingredients that might be barriers for its use and acceptability. Additionally, in this review, alternative applications of milk constituents in the non-food area such as in the manufacture of plastic materials and textile fibers are also introduced. The unmet needs, the cross-fertilization in between various protein domains,the carbon footprint requirements, the environmental necessities, the health and wellness new demand, etc., are dominant factors in the search for innovation approaches;these factors are also outlining the further innovation potential deriving from those “apparent” constrains obliging science and technology to take them into account.

State of the Art Manufacturing and Engineering of Nanocellulose: A Review of Available Data and Industrial Applications

This review provides a critical overview of the recent methods and processes developed for the production of cellulose nanoparticles with controlled morphology, structure and properties, and also sums up (1) the processes for the chemical modifications of these particles in order to prevent their re-aggregation during spray-drying procedures and to increase their reactivity, (2) the recent processes involved in the production of nanostructured biomaterials and composites. The structural and physical properties of those nanocelluloses, combined with their biodegradability, make them materials of choice in the very promising area of nanotechnology, likely subject to major commercial successes in the context of green chemistry. With a prospective and pioneering approach to the subject matter, various laboratories involved in this domain have developed bio-products now almost suitable to industrial applications;although some important steps remain to be overcome, those are worth been reviewed and supplemented. At this stage, several pilot units and demonstration plants have been built to improve, optimize and scale-up the processes developed at laboratory scale. Industrial reactors with suitable environment and modern control equipment are to be expected within that context. This review shall bring the suitable processing dimension that may be needed now, given the numerous reviews outlining the product potential attributes. An abundant literature database, close to 250 publications and patents, is provided, consolidating the various research and more practical angles.