Growing Bacterial Cellulose: Envisioning a Systematic Procedure to Design This Promising Material

Patrizia Bolzan () and Flavia Papile
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Patrizia Bolzan: Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano, 20158 Milan, Italy
Flavia Papile: Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering “Giulio Natta”, Politecnico di Milano, 20131 Milan, Italy

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 3, 1-24

Abstract: This contribution presents an approach for studying and understanding bacterial cellulose (BC) as a growing material (GM) to be produced, optimized and controlled for potential applications in the design field. The dialogic exchange between the world of design and that of applied sciences led research groups to envision, as a promising environment, the practice of growing materials instead of extracting them. This research has been structured to explore and verify the possibilities offered by design, as an experimental and holistic discipline, in the management of GMs, and specifically of BC. Through a detailed experimental setup and in-depth observation of the materials, a procedure to grow repeatable samples of BC is presented. Several progressive attempts were made and reported to define a precise procedure to grow BC. Potential improvements to the growing techniques and future developments of the work are discussed in the final part of the article, defining possible directions for the research in the design field.

Keywords: bacterial cellulose; growing materials; materials design; sustainable materials (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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