Foreword

Never before in human history have so many people populated our planet and the need for sharing and sensibly using natural life resources, water and food as provided by rivers, lakes, oceans, pasture and farm land, been so urgent. Never before was the pace at which fossil and mineral resources, developed and formed far before human beings populated the earth, consumed so fast and the risk of irreversibly unhinging life-sustaining ecological equilibria been so high as it is today.

It is, therefore, particularly important to rediscover the great opportunities, gifts and miracles our biosphere holds for us. Recent advances in powerful instrumental-analytical techniques and an exponentially increasing understanding of biochemical and physical processes, natural building concepts and functional principles have created an unique fundament that just needs to be used with greater determination to make significant progress towards a more renewable-based life and bio-economy that includes bio-based materials, too.

Lightweight, highly open-porous materials, optimized throughout evolution with regard to weight-to-stiffness ratio, mechanical and chemical properties and adapted to humid environments, are ubiquitous in nature and are thoroughly designed for a wide range of functions in different environmental conditions.

This book gives an overview of the current state of research in the field of lightweight, highly open-porous polysaccharide and protein aerogels, conveying an impression of how diverse the field of bio-based aerogels has become in the last decade and addressing some of the major challenges of future research. The particular value of this book, however, is that the 16 chapters describe novel approaches related to modeling, simulation, tailoring, tuning and ageing of aerogels from some of the most abundant terrestrial and marine biopolymers, next to aspects of the impact of source type and processing conditions on morphological properties. This is complemented by a comprehensive discussion of the opportunities of polysaccharide and protein aerogels for a wide range of applications in thermal insulation, water treatment, food engineering, packaging, aeronautics or biomedicine.

Even though most of the presented aerogels are still not much beyond the research state, the book is gripping as it demonstrates that bio-based aerogels can compete with similar materials made from synthetic polymers and open new opportunities for novel applications, as their specific chemical and physical properties can greatly impact the biocompatibility, biodegradability or self-assembly to ordered supramolecular phases.

Bearing in mind that a more bio-based economy will become an ineluctable necessity in near future, I wish this book a broad readership across all communities including science, industry and decision makers.

Falk W. Liebner

Vienna