This study investigates the effects of chitosan contents as a compatibilizer on the properties of polycaprolactone (PCL)/tapioca starch composite films. The mechanical and thermal, morphological and biodegradability properties of the composite films were analysed to determine the feasibility of chitosan in enhancing the properties of the composite films by improving the PCL/starch interaction. The incorporation of 2 parts per hundred (pph) chitosan slightly improved the tensile strength while the Young’ modulus, water vapor permeability and biodegradability of composite film increased with the increasing of the chitosan contents from 2 to 8 pph. The melting temperature and degree of crystallization of the composite films with 2 pph chitosan content showed that there was an interaction between PCL and starch via hydrogen bonding which was proven by Fourier transform infra-red spectra (FTIR) analysis and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) micrographs. The micrographs of the composite films reveal the formation of hollow spaces to indicate that there was interaction between PCL and starch with the addition of chitosan as a compatibilizer. Hence, chitosan has successfully acted as a compatibilizer at 2 pph as the properties of composite films improved at this composition.
This study proposed an effective method of methylene blue (MB) removal using a membrane with photocatalytic properties. The photocatalytic membrane, made of polyethersulfone (PESf) was incorporated with titanium dioxide (TiO2) and silver oxide (Ag2O) as the photocatalyst during the phase inversion process. TiO2 was synthesized using sol-gel method before being modified by Ag2O via wet pre-deposition method. The PESf/TiO2/Ag2O (PTA) membrane was characterized using scanning electron microscope coupled with elementary dispersion X-ray (SEM-EDX), X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD), attenuated Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR), and ultraviolet visible near infrared (UV-vis NIR). The PTA membrane with 0.2 wt.% loading of TiO2/Ag2O shows uniform distribution of the photocatalyst materials and exhibits the highest degradation of MB at 85%. The TiO2/Ag2O presence was confirmed by the crystallinity analysis using XRD. UV-Vis NIR revealed that the band gap of TiO2 reduced from 3.2 to 2.1 eV when modified with Ag2O. This proved that membrane separation assisted with photocatalytic degradation is able to perform high degradation of MB dyes and has potential to be applied in industrial application.
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