Abstract
Bio-plastics and bio-materials are composed of natural or biomass derived polymers, offering solutions to solve immediate environmental issues. Polysaccharide-based bio-plastics represent important alternatives to conventional plastic because of their intrinsic biodegradable nature. Amylose-only (AO), an engineered barley starch with 99% amylose, was tested to produce cross-linked all-natural bioplastic using normal barley starch as a control. Glycerol was used as plasticizer and citrate cross-linking was used to improve the mechanical properties of cross-linked AO starch extrudates. Extrusion converted the control starch from A-type to Vh- and B-type crystals, showing a complete melting of the starch crystals in the raw starch granules. The cross-linked AO and control starch specimens displayed an additional wide-angle diffraction reflection. Phospholipids complexed with Vh-type single helices constituted an integrated part of the AO starch specimens. Gas permeability tests of selected starch-based prototypes demonstrated properties comparable to that of commercial Mater-Bi© plastic. The cross-linked AO prototypes had composting characteristics not different from the control, indicating that the modified starch behaves the same as normal starch. The data shows the feasibility of producing all-natural bioplastic using designer starch as raw material.
Highlights
In March 2013, the European Commission published a green paper that outlined a strategy for decreasing the impact of plastic on the environment
The AO starch, as shown previously [6], provides a useful raw material for bio-plastics fabrication. We extended this initiative using a scale-up extruder and investigating cross-linking with citric acid (CA) with the aim to produce a more
Massive thermoplastic polymer production is leading to an extensive accumulation of micro-plastics in the environment, and is becoming an increasing environmental threat
Summary
In March 2013, the European Commission published a green paper that outlined a strategy for decreasing the impact of plastic on the environment. As opposed to most conventional plastics, biodegradable plastics are metabolized by environmental microorganisms, and plant-based bio-plastics represent one of the most interesting clean alternative to conventional plastics Their biochemical structure, favorable physiochemical assets, abundance in nature, and well-established fabrication technologies for plastics support development of novel bio-plastics types [6,7,8,9], offering two major, distinct advantages, mainly being that of their renewability and availability. Improvement of the mechanical properties of starch materials have been achieved with reagents such as sodium trimetaphosphate, phosphorus oxychloride, epichlorohydrin, sodium tripolyphosphate, and 1,2,3,4-diepoxybutane Most of these compounds are unsafe and potentially toxic, and the use of citric acid in conjunction with sodium hypophosphite is considered to be a cleaner cross-linking technology [17]. Prototypes were characterized for crystallinity, mechanics, gas permeability, and composting biodegradation
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