Abstract
Bamboo is an alternative sustainable material for use in product design and has been incorporated into the concepts of eco-design. Here, we investigated the mechanical properties and morphologies of low density polyethylene (LDPE)/bamboo flour (BF) composites that were modified with polyethylene-graft-maleic anhydride (PE-g-MA) and glycerol. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and tensile tests of the composites demonstrated poor adhesion between the filler and matrix. Contact angle measurement showed that the surface of LDPE was modified by the presence of the load. The thermal stability of the composites was studied by measuring the oxidation induction time (OIT). Preliminary bacterial penetration tests were performed using culture inoculums of E. coli and S. aureus to investigate the natural antibacterial and bacteriostatic properties attributed to bamboo. Furthermore, bamboo may have interesting antioxidant activity with potential for use in food packaging applications.
Highlights
Materials design is a modern science that incorporates materials engineering with product design
The potentially natural antimicrobial and antioxidant properties of bamboo fibers could lead to composites with enhanced potential in food packaging applications
We investigated the effects of adding bamboo flour into an low density polyethylene (LDPE) matrix
Summary
Materials design is a modern science that incorporates materials engineering with product design. According to Datschefski[1], biothinking means looking at the world as a single system and developing new techniques derived from ecology to apply to sustainable design. In this context, bamboo has shown great potential. The steam explosion technique was applied to extract fibers from raw bamboo trees. Similar to others studies[6,7], the present work used bamboo flour instead of extracted fibers to produce composites. Bamboo composites prepared in this way could be presented as a more viable alternative for the development of design products. Bamboo has been presented as a viable alternative for the design of composites. The analysis of thermal oxidative behavior in addition to preliminary antimicrobial studies of bamboo composites have been less studied
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