Biodegradable composites with improved barrier properties and transparency from the impregnation of PLA to bacterial cellulose membranes

Abstract

Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) was impregnated in bacterial cellulose (BC) membranes. BC/PLA films were prepared by solvent casting and mechanical, optical and barrier properties, and biodegradation process were investigated. The transparency of processed films was higher than that of neat BC and increased with PLA content. Moreover, the incorporation of PLA to BC enhanced significantly the water vapor barrier properties of the BC membranes. The bionanocomposites contained a high percentage of cellulose due to the impregnation method that leads to the film with a BC content of 94%, which practically maintains the excellent mechanical properties of BC. However, when increasing the PLA content in the bionanocomposites the mechanical properties decreased slightly with respect to BC. Biodegradation under real soil conditions was determined indirectly through the study of the visual degradation and disintegration, demonstrating that the bionanocomposites were degraded faster than the neat PLA. The successful production of BC/PLA bionanocomposites suggested the possible application of them for active food packaging. V C 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2016, 133, 43669.

Nanocellulose as a natural source for groundbreaking applications in materials science: Today’s state

“…Technical sector -Especially for technical applications such as fuel cells, (transparent) electrically conductive membranes, and loudspeaker vibration films, there has been extensive R&D on BNC composites over the past years [10]. Recent results focus on applications in the area of packaging [149,150], water absorption [151] and supercapacitors [152,153], as well as optical devices [154][155][156][157][158][159][160]. In such applications, either BNC itself is reinforced by additives [161][162][163][164] or BNC serves as the reinforcing material, e.g., for synthetic polymers [165,166].…”

Nanocellulose in Thin Films, Coatings, and Plies for Packaging Applications: A Review

“…The nanocellulose in those products made it possible to maintain a stable mesoporous structure, and the films showed promise for use in air filtration. Non-aqueous media When the matrix phase to be reinforced by nanocellulose is too hydrophobic to dissolve in water, non-aqueous solvents have been employed in the preparation of such films and coatings (Grunert and Winter 2002;Petersson and Oksman 2006; SanchezGarcia et al 2008; Ayuk et al 2009;Petersson et al 2009;Hossain et al 2011;Fortunati et al 2012b;Hassan et al 2012;Salmieri et al 2014b;Song et al 2014;Fortunati et al 2015;Kiziltas et al 2015;Urbina et al 2016). By employing a solvent with a sufficiently low boiling point, the film preparation can be carried out with good distribution of the reinforcement, suitably low viscosity to allow easy spreading of the film, ready evaporation REVIEW ARTICLE bioresources.com .…”

Prospects for Replacement of Some Plastics in Packaging with Lignocellulose Materials: A Brief Review

“…However, those products can generate substantial waste disposal problems due to their lack of biodegradability. A lot of research and development activities have been carried out to make cellulose-based materials; these have achieved advantages such as biodegradability and barrier properties for packaging (Castro-Rosas et al 2016;Shi et al 2016;Urbina et al 2016;Zhang et al 2016;Chen et al 2017;Ferrer et al 2017;Hubbe et al 2017). Four types of barrier performance often studied relative to packaging film requirements include grease and water resistance, as well as oxygen and water vapor barrier properties, as shown in Fig.…”