Abstract
The use of starch based films as a potential alternative choice to petroleum derived plastics is imperative for environmental waste management. This study presents a new biopolymer (sugar palm starch) for the preparation of biodegradable packaging films using a solution casting technique. The effect of different plasticizer types (glycerol (G), sorbitol (S) and glycerol-sorbitol (GS) combination) with varying concentrations (0, 15, 30 and 45, w/w%) on the tensile, thermal and barrier properties of sugar palm starch (SPS) films was evaluated. Regardless of plasticizer types, the tensile strength of plasticized SPS films decreased, whereas their elongation at break (E%) increased as the plasticizer concentrations were raised. However, the E% for G and GS-plasticized films significantly decreased at a higher plasticizer concentration (45% w/w) due to the anti-plasticization effect of plasticizers. Change in plasticizer concentration showed an insignificant effect on the thermal properties of S-plasticized films. The glass transition temperature of SPS films slightly decreased as the plasticizer concentration increased from 15% to 45%. The plasticized films exhibited increased water vapor permeability values from 4.855 × 10−10 to 8.70 × 10−10 g·m−1·s−1·Pa−1, irrespective of plasticizer types. Overall, the current study manifested that plasticized sugar palm starch can be regarded as a promising biopolymer for biodegradable films.
Highlights
On the basis of biodegradability, availability, renewability, non-toxicity and affordability, starch is one of the most promising of all the potential biopolymer materials [1,2,3,4]
The possible reason for the high tensile strength at low plasticizer concentration is the domination of strong hydrogen bonds produced by starch–starch intermolecular interaction over starch–plasticizer attraction
The different plasticizers utilized in the film-forming solution have remarkable effects on the tensile, thermal and barrier properties of the resulting films
Summary
On the basis of biodegradability, availability, renewability, non-toxicity and affordability, starch is one of the most promising of all the potential biopolymer materials [1,2,3,4]. Several researches have been conducted regarding the effect of polyols (especially glycerol and sorbitol) on the properties of films based on various starch origins [10,52,53,54,55,56,57].Of recent, Sahari et al [40,43] investigated the effect of glycerol content (15, 20, 30 and 40 w/w%) on the physical and thermo-mechanical properties of SPS. The effect of glycerol, sorbitol and glycerol–sorbitol combination as plasticizer at different concentrations (0%, 15%, 30% and 45% dry starch based) on the tensile, thermal and barrier properties of SPS films was investigated
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