Functional Nanomaterials from Waste and Low‐Value Natural Products: A Technological Approach Level

Low‐ and negative‐value (waste) products represent a valuable resource. Its use as a source for the fabrication of high value materials represents a lucrative pathway to increasing sustainability and decreasing the economic cost of various industries. Thermochemical methods for the valorization of biowaste and low‐value natural products are simple and cheap yet sufficiently efficient to deliver significant economic benefits. Plasma‐based methods represent another family of technologies for waste‐to‐value conversion. The nanostructure nucleation and growth in plasmas involve a complex set of physical and chemical processes that occur in bulk plasma and on surfaces. The choice between these two types of technology assumes a complex optimization that takes into account several factors including the cost of precursors; initial outlay and operating cost of equipment; the cost of labor; the cost of production engineering including the research and development efforts for designing the industrial technology, which is typically higher for the plasma‐based systems, and so on. In this article a technology level comparison of thermochemical and plasma‐based techniques for the valorization of raw and waste biomass, where the intent is to use the resulting products for environmental remediation, energy storage, optoelectronics, and biomedical applications, is presented.