Preperation and Functional Characterisation of Biopolymer (Arabinoxylan and Cellulose) Based Films/Coatings

Abstract

Vast amounts of by-products are generated every year from agricultural crop production and hence great quantities of polysaccharides remain underutilized. The polysaccharides from agricultural by-product can be separated and used in the form of new materials. This project devoted to the possibility of using hemicelluloses for special polysaccharide film applications in the packaging sector, starting from hemicellulose isolations from a side product of agricultural processes, hemicellulose characterization and assessing material properties and the potential use of hemicellulose films in later applications. First, Arabinoxylan and cellulose were extracted from wheat straw. After that, cellulose was esterified by using alkali. Films were prepared by mixing arabinoxylan with fatty acid esterified cellulose. In order to characterize the esterified cellulose, FTIR of the sample was carried out. The presence of carbohydrate within the film was also estimated by phenol sulphuric method. The compositional analysis of film was done using gas chromatography mass spectrophotometery (GC-MS). Furthermore, in order to understand the structural characterization, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), water vapor permeability rate (WVPR) and the color of films were analysed.