ABSTRACT:Two agricultural by-products, sugar-beet pulp and wheat bran, have been examined for their suitability to be transformed into bioplastics by esterification by lauroyl chloride. Influence of cellulose content was studied on eleven samples enriched in cellulose after chemical or enzymatic removal of pectins from sugar-beet pulp and heteroxylans from wheat bran. After a pretreatment by immersion in 0.5 mol/L sulfuric acid, esterification was carried out with lauroyl chloride. Neither the amount of cellulose nor the extraction treatment had a marked influence on the formation of plastic. A film could be obtained from all the wheat-bran samples, including samples with low cellulose content, but only from one sugar-beet pulp sample. The crystallinity of the cellulose in sugar-beet pulp and wheat bran were different. The nature of cellulose could be responsible for the failure of sugar-beet pulp residues to form plastic.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.