Utilization of cereal-based husks to achieve sustainable development goals: Treatment of wastewater, biofuels, and biodegradable packaging
Résumé
Background: Food waste management (FWM) has gained much attention from industries, research institutions, and national, and international organizations over the past few years because of the significant potential of food waste products to produce valuable products and control environmental pollution, so to find out the sustainable approaches to utilize these waste materials is a current focus of researchers these days. Scope and approach: This review aims to explore the potential of cereal-based husks as waste products from 5 major cereal grains including wheat, rice, corn, barley, and millet to achieve goals 6 (clean water and sanitation), goal 7 (affordable and clean energy), goal 9 (industry, innovation, and infrastructure), and goal 12 (responsible consumption and production) out of the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) as per the agenda given by the united nations to make the world more healthy and developed with minimum environmental pollution. Key findings and conclusion: Cereal-based husks can be utilized to make adsorbents to remove heavy metals, dyes, antibiotics, pesticides, and other petrol contaminants from wastewater. In the sense of clean and affordable energy, these husks can be utilized to produce biogas (methane), organic bio-oil, biodiesel, and bioethanol. Moreover, the biopolymeric matrices of these husks can be efficiently used to make bioplastics, biocomposite films, biodegradable foams, and packaging paper for food and other industries.