Extraction methods were developed to recover nucleic acids from two different agri-food industry wastes: spent brewers’ yeast and vegetable scraps.
These nucleic acids were then tested as bio-sourced PIN flame retardants for cotton fabrics (200 g/m2). A “simple, cheap and green” extraction was achieved using a combination of freezing and milling for lysis of cells to release nucleic acids, with or without detergents, followed by recovery in solvents or in sodium phosphate solution (the latter was not used because it brought an inherent flame retardancy effect due to the phosphorus content, so perturbing this study method), then centrifuging and finally ethanol precipitation. The nucleic acids from brewers’ yeast showed better fire performance (probably because the vegetable wastes were less homogeneous) achieving self-extinction of the cotton fabric at 8% weight add-on and with quality comparable to commercial nucleic acids.
“Nucleic acids from agro-industrial wastes: A green recovery method for fire retardant applications”, F. Bosco et al., Industrial Crops & Products 108 (2017) 208–218 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2017.06.035