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Expanded polystyrene foams are lightweight, cheap, and have excellent strength and insulation properties however their inability to biodegrade in traditional landfill sites made their disposal problematic. Starch, a polysaccharide, has the potential to replace synthetic thermoplastics for some applications but starch-based foams are hydrophilic, which limits their applications. In this work, polylactide (PLA), a sustainably derived and industrially compostable polymer was added to starch/cellulose composite foams to enhance their water barrier properties. PLA powder at various weight% was mixed with moistened starch and cellulose mixture and composite foams were prepared by compression moulding at 220 °C.The thermomechanical and viscoelastic properties of the produced foam materials were analysed by thermogravimetric analysis, dynamic mechanical thermal analysis and also by the 3-point compressive mechanical quasi-static testing. It was found that flexural strength increased and the water absorption properties decreased with an increase in PLA weight (%) in the starch/cellulose foam composites.

Additive manufacturing or 3D printing has the potential to displace some of the current manufacturing techniques and is particularly attractive if local renewable waste resources can be used. In this study, rice husk, and wood powders were compounded in polylactic acid (PLA) by twin screw extrusion to produce filaments for fused-deposition modeling 3D printing. The biomasses were characterized in terms of physical features (e.g., particle size, density) and chemical compositions (e.g., solid state nuclear magnetic resonance, ash content). The two biomasses were found to have a different impact on the rheological behavior of the compounds and the extrusion process overall stability. When comparing the complex viscosity of neat PLA to the biomass/PLA compounds, the integration of wood powder increased the complex viscosity of the compound, whereas the integration of rice husk powder decreased it. This significant difference in rheological behavior was attributed to the higher specific surface area (and chemical reactivity) of the rice husk particles and the presence of silica in rice husks compared to the wood powder. Color variations were also observed. Despite the biomass filler and rheological behavior differences, the mechanical properties of the 3D printed samples were similar and predominantly affected by the printing direction.

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