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Biodegradable Film
C. Casavola, L. Lamberti, G. Mastrandrea and C. Pappalettere
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Meccanica e Gestionale, Politecnico di Bari, Italy
Plastics are utilised in almost every manufacturing industry in the world because of the
favourable balance of mechanical, technological and cost factors. However, to minimise the environmental impact of plastic materials, researchers are attempting to synthesise new biodegradable
polymers that can satisfy also standard requirements on manufacturability and mechanical properties. This paper studies a new material where an aliphaticaromatic biodegradable component is
included in a polyester matrix. For that purpose, microbiological tests, manufacturability tests and
mechanical tests are carried out. In particular, thin films are exposed to the attack of spore colonies
to check if the new material is fully biodegradable and compostable. Material formability in fashion of
blown films is investigated for different volume fractions of biodegradable component added into the
formula. Mechanical behaviour of the new material is then assessed by carrying out tensile tests.
Experimental results demonstrate that thin films of the new material can be produced using the
standard technologies currently available. Mechanical properties are better than those possessed by
traditional non-biodegradable plastics like polyethylene.
ABSTRACT:
KEY WORDS:
Introduction
In the last few decades, a wide variety of synthetic
polymers has been developed by industry to satisfy
the increasing demand from market. Plastics are
basically made of petrochemical derivates possessing chemical, physical, electromagnetic and
mechanical properties well suited for the common
industrial applications. However, the widespread
use plastics poses, especially in the leading industrialised countries, many serious concerns on hydrosanitary and environmental safety [16]. Furthermore, the cost of collecting and processing waste
plastics typically exceeds the value of the material.
The number of new plastic containers has also increased in recent years, resulting in corresponding
decreases in the overall recycling rate even though
the total amount recycled has increased [7]. Finally,
the use of non-biodegradable plastics in the life
cycle of naturally biodegradable materials such as
food or humid waste is an inherent contradiction.
These facts suggest following a new rationale in the
industrial production: products must be designed
and engineered from conception to reincarnation.
In simple words, the whole life cycle of the product must be considered [16]. Therefore, a new
generation of materials, products and processes
215
216
217
(B)
218
(A)
(B)
Figure 4: (A) Balloon formed near the nozzle when it was attempted to produce the 100% biodegradable film with the same process
parameters used for LDPE; (B) fully biodegradable film obtained after setting properly the blow-moulding process parameters
Mechanical Testing
The mechanical behaviour of the biodegradable films
has been investigated by carrying out uniaxial tensile
tests. Films have been provided by the industrial
partner (operating in the Southern part of Italy)
involved in this research. Table 1 reports, for each
volume fraction of biodegradable component
included in the formula, the number of tested specimens and the corresponding main geometric
dimensions, selected according to ASTM [24]. All
specimens have been obtained by cutting the thin
film along the direction of extrusion (i.e. the longitudinal direction). Razor blades are utilised to cut
specimens with a great deal of accuracy without
generating pre-stresses in the material or producing
inconsistent specimen edges [25].
Figure 6 shows a top view of the specimen geometry: the specimen is shaped as a rectangle of total
219
(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
Figure 5: SEM micrographs (500) of the evolution of biodegradation process of the thin film exposed to the attack of mixed spore
colonies: (A) no exposure; (B) 15th day of exposure; (C) 20th day of exposure; (D) final degradation after 40 days of exposure
Number of
tested
specimens
Total length
LTOT (mm)
Width
w (mm)
Thickness
t (mm)
Nominal
cross section
Ao (mm2)
0 (LDPE)
170
15
0.065
0.975
25
170
15
0.065
0.975
50
170
15
0.070
1.050
75
170
15
0.070
1.050
170
15
0.070
1.050
Lo
L TOT
Figure 6: Schematic of tested specimens (dimensions are in
mm) (Lo is the gauge length for video-extensometer measurements)
220
F
F
Ao w t
(1)
L Lo
Lo
(2)
221
Tensile
modulus
(MPa)
Stretch ratio
at failure ku
Tensile strength
ru (true stress)
(MPa)
0 (LDPE)
112.9 3.63
3.654 0.093
57.53 2.814
25
115.6 4.57
3.579 0.301
63.32 4.295
50
117.5 5.26
5.082 0.537
104.9 8.182
75
76.7 6.45
6.417 0.337
118.2 8.535
76.3 5.81
7.920 0.438
226.9 21.78
k 1 e
(3)
Under the assumption of material incompressibility, the true stress rr developed in the material can be
computed as:
rr r1 e
(4)
Fu
ku
Ao
(5)
222
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
0% (LDPE)
25%
50%
75%
100%
2
1
0
0
300
250
200
150
100
50
0% (LDPE)
25%
50%
75%
100%
0
0
Figure 7: Results of mechanical tests carried out for different film compositions
becomes clearly visible and starts already in correspondence of k = 2. The fully biodegradable film has
a constitutive behaviour completely different from
LDPE as it can undergo much larger deformations
(i.e. about 700% versus 265% elongation) at a nominal specific load two times higher (i.e. about 30 MPa
versus 15 MPa).
The differences in constitutive behaviour observed
in the experimental campaign can be explained with
the fact that the mass density of the biodegradable
material is higher than that of LDPE. The tensile
modulus of the fully biodegradable material is lower
than that of LDPE (76.3 MPa versus 112.9 MPa).
This resulted in a reduction of the yield stress of the
223
260
240
Upper limit
220
Average
200
Lower limit
180
160
140
120
100
80
u = 0.018v 2 0.3939v + 57.228
60
R 2 = 0.9574
40
20
0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Fraction of biodegradable material (%)
80
90
100
Figure 8: Trend lines of true tensile strength with respect to volume fraction of biodegradable
Figure 9: Stressstretch ratio curves obtained for different fractions of biodegradable component
biodegradable polymer (from the Consideres construction, it may estimated that the yield limit is
reduced by 50% and 66% for the 75% and 100%
biodegradable blends, respectively, compared with
that of LDPE). However, the load-carrying capability
at large strains became close to that of high density
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polyethylene (HDPE). The blend with 50% biodegradable fraction presents an excellent balance
between load-carrying capability at large strains
(almost 50% more than LDPE) and tensile modulus
at small strains which is practically the same as for
LDPE.
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