Biosynthesis of cellulose microfibre from peanut shell for the preparation of bio-nanocomposite films for food-packaging application

[摘要] Synthetic petroleum-based products are normally used for food-packaging application which results in environmental pollution. This creates a need to develop biodegradable polymer and polymer-based films to maintain thestability of packed materials for a defined period of time that will overcome the drawbacks of the synthetic petroleumbased packaging system. The current work is focussed on evaluating the potential of cellulose agar bio-nanocompositefilms in food packaging application. The physical and mechanical properties such as its tensile strength (TS), Young’s modulus (YM) and elongation at break ($E$) were found to be increased on loading with cellulose microfibre (CMF).TS is found to be increased from $38.8\pm 3.2$ to $49.4\pm 4.3$ and there is about 6% increase in the elongation at break. Similarly, CMF films exhibit $54\pm 0.2$% water solubility, 1.304 opacity and $1.71\pm 0.07$ GPa, respectively. Also, the bionanocomposite film showed less swelling property and an increase in soil degradation rate, enabling it to be applied in food packaging.

[学科分类] 材料工程

[关键词] Synthetic;biodegradable;bio-nanocomposite;food packaging.