About this team member
Warren Batchelor works in the BioProcessing Research Institute of Australia (BioPRIA) within the Department of Chemical Engineering at Monash University. He is an expert on paper as a nonwoven cellulose fibre material, including the relationships between sheet properties and internal structure. His research group is heavily focused on the production and application of cellulose nanofibres. These are a new, fully recyclable and biodegradable nanofibre made by breaking down cellulose fibres from wood or agricultural residue. Reducing the fibre diameter by over three orders of magnitude reduces the size of the pores between the fibres, once formed into sheets, greatly improving the performance of the sheet as a barrier to water vapour and oxygen, or as an ultrafiltration membrane in liquid filtration. The pore size can be further reduced by making composites of cellulose nanofibres and nanoparticles. Other applications of this versatile material include as an additive in paper manufacture, as a substrate for flexible printed electronics and as reinforcement in modern light-weight composites