The conference has been focused both on running and incoming European research projects in green chemistry and biobased, circular economy, and on scientific communications on topics related to green chemistry and sustainability.

Attendees from different countries participated in the event, including, in addition to Italy, France, Germany, Latvia, Poland, Spain and UK.

Many interesting topics have been covered:

• biodegradability, recyclability, sustainability;
• electrospinning;
• green chemistry applied to renewable resources and biomass valorization;
• medical, health care and cosmetics applications of sustainable materials;
• microbial degradation;
• packaging with enhanced barrier properties, and active packaging;
• sustainable and performing coatings, organic and hybrids.

The Milan Polymer Days group has participated with an invited lecture on “Silk/polyamidoamine membranes for absorbing chromium (VI) from water”, given by Professor Elisabetta Ranucci.

Here is a summary of her presentation! Hexavalent chromium, Cr(VI), is one of the highly toxic and carcinogenic pollutants that can be found in groundwater. Many efficient remediation strategies for Cr(VI) contaminated water can be in principle adopted, including reactive barriers, electrochemical precipitation, reverse osmosis, chemical precipitation, combined reduction-coagulation-filtration, and ion exchange adsorption. However, to satisfy the strict EU drinking water regulations, efficient techniques are required to reduce Cr(VI) concentration in water below 50 ppb. The proposed purification strategy relies on the use of smart hydrogels of polyamidoamines structure capable to bind chromate ions strongly but reversibly. Hydrogels are water-swollen and soft materials, which normally exhibit poor mechanical properties. To make them suitable for practical application, the solution proposed is to reinforce them with raw silk mats, obtained by grinding and compressing raw silk. The composite membranes obtained are tough and capable to withstand compressive stresses in the ultrafiltration processes adopted to purify Cr(VI)-contaminated water. The data presented indicated that properly designed membranes allow achieving high Cr(VI) absorption efficiency. In fact, by ultrafiltering Cr(VI) solutions with concentration 1 ppm, a final concentration of 4 ppb was achieved.

The congress chairs, Professors Patrizia Cinelli and Maurizia Seggiani, have announced that next congress edition will be held in Pisa in 2025. We look forward to participating once more with an interesting contribution!