Waste not want not

A recently closed study found that the biodegradable resin, polybutylene succinate, could make decomposable food packaging and waste collection bags, in an effort to make sure everything on long-term manned space missions is fully recyclable.

The BIOBACK project, funded by TDE as part of the MELISSA project and conducted by researchers at LEITAT in Spain, tested a selection of the most adequate biodegradable materials for packaging food and for collecting the crew's waste.

Today, food sent to space is packaged in materials that are only intended to keep the food edible for its shelf life. They are often coated in aluminum, meaning they cannot be reused and have to be brought back to Earth. The search for advanced biodegradable packaging materials is essential to improving life support systems’ ability to recycle on a loop.

Even though a large extent of bioplastics are available in the current market to supply terrestrial needs, the materials  needed to efficiently contain wastes and metabolic resources must fulfil a huge range of properties from biosafety to vacuum packing, as required for future ESA missions.

The selected materials were tested to see how long they took to degrade, depending on the different conditions required by different foods - from fresh and wet to powdered and dry. Polybutylene succinate was the only material that degraded relatively quickly, while also producing fairly large amounts of useful byproducts, such as CO2.

All documentation for this contract received last week.