Sustainable production of hydrogels

Hydrogels are a group of crosslinked polymeric materials whose hydrophilic structure enables them to retain large amounts of water or biological materials in their three-dimensional networks. In addition, their viscoelastic structure has led to the widespread use of these products in the fields of industry, tissue engineering, agriculture, and environmental areas. As expected, with the advancement of technology and the importance of environmental and economic issues, natural hydrogels are based on synthetic polymers due to their higher swelling rate, long degradability, and a wide variety of safe or low-risk raw materials. As a result, sustainable hydrogels based on natural polymers as a biodegradable and inexpensive product are an important issue to be discussed. In this chapter of the book, besides introducing hydrogels and classifying polymers, all methods of sustainable production of hydrogels have been presented to try to help the readers by providing schematic and realistic images of the synthesis process as product samples.