Extraction, Characterization and Applications of Biopolymers from Sustainable Sources

Biopolymers from renewable sources are increasingly explored to reduce the carbon footprint of materials and mitigate plastic pollution. This review synthesizes the last five years of progress across the biopolymer value chain, comparing plant, microbial/fermentation, fungal, and marine/algal resources and critically assessing greener extraction and fractionation routes (ultrasound and microwave intensification, subcritical water, supercritical CO₂ with co-solvents, ionic liquids, deep eutectic solvents including natural deep eutectic solvents, and enzymatic or bio-mediated processes). We emphasize yield-selectivity trade-offs, scalability, energy demand, and solvent recovery. Downstream, we summarize purification and performance tuning via crosslinking, derivatization, blending/plasticization, and nanocomposites, and we map advanced characterization to targeted functional properties to bridge processing choices with end-use performance. Applications are organized across food and agriculture, biomedical and pharmaceutical technologies, packaging, and cosmetics, with cross-cutting attention to safety and regulatory compliance, quality-by-design, techno-economics, and life-cycle assessment. Key bottlenecks are feedstock variability, viscosity and recyclability limitations of designer solvents, and persistent gaps in barrier and thermal properties versus petrochemical benchmarks, compounded by uneven composting and recycling infrastructure. Promising directions include low-viscosity or switchable solvents, data- and artificial intelligence (AI)-guided process optimization, engineered biopolymers, and circular end-of-life strategies that align material design with realistic recovery routes.