Development and characterization of agro waste fillers polyvinyl alcohol biofilms

Abstract

Synthetic Plastics are the most commonly used materials, particularly in packaging applications. However, the emission of greenhouse gases, i.e., carbon dioxide and methane accumulation, leads to significant environmental consequences by the disposal of synthetic plastics. Therefore, it is imperative to move towards alternative raw materials for plastic packaging materials. The rising environmental awareness has exhilarated the scientists towards the developmental of environmental friendly alternatives to conventional plastic packaging materials. In this direction, great attention is placed on incorporating agro/municipal wastes into polymeric composites by various researchers. The convenience of their utilization in polymer composite films lies in the fact that these biodegradable particles are obtained easily from farm wastes at zero cost. At the same time, agro-waste fillers improved the thermal, biological, and physic mechanical properties of biofilms. newlineThis research intends to use the biodegradable synthetic polymer Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) as a matrix owing to its outstanding film-forming ability, as well as some agro-waste materials in the form of nano-sized powder as reinforcement fillers, such as Coconut Shell, Green Banana Peel, and Zea Mays Cob. The different proportions of (5,10,15,20 and 25wt.%) agro-waste fillers were incorporated with the PVA matrix to develop the biodegradable films. As far as the previous studies show that the agro-waste fillers utilized less as reinforcement filler in PVA matrix to develop the biofilms. The biofilms were fabricated by the solution casting method. The prepared biofilms are characterized by FTIR, XRD, TGA, DSC, Tensile testing, surface morphology, UV-barrier testing, water absorption, water vapour permeability (WVP) and soil biodegradation tests. newline