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Recycling of food-by-products is very important subject. Many trials have been done to reuse by-product, however, almost trials have not been to install the commercial process due to their treatment costs and their qualities. To convert biodegradable stuff is one of their trail fields. However, their products have disadvantage of high cost and low properties against water-resistance. To minimize costs and to improve waterproof property, we used zein-containing corn gluten meal and succeeded in making solid materials by injection molding. We turned the materials into pellets with an extruder, and then molded the pellets into seedling culture pots with an injection molder. This study project was carried out jointly with Showa Sangyo Co., The Japan Steel Works and National Food Research Institute. In this project we were able to successfully reduce costs and to obtain solid molded products for practical use by adopting the injection molding method, which has many advantages in productivity (low costs, high moldability, flexibility to make various shapes of molds). At present, we are working to assess the biodegradable molded material actually applied and to improve materials for different purposes.

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