SCHOOL OF CHEMICAL SCIENCES

SEMESTER II, SESSION 2017/2018

KOE 423
SELECTED TOPICS IN ORGANIC CHEMISTRY

TOPICS :
POLYACTIDE FOR (BIO)DEGRADABLE POLYMERS
AS A POTENTIAL MATERIAL FOR FOOD
PACKAGING

NAME: CHE SITI ZAIZLEN BINTI CHE MAT ZAIN (130053)

LECTURER: DR. MUHAMMAD BISYRUL HAFI OTHMAN

 Recently, a significant expansion of biodegradable plastics between new technologies

and commercial applications was observed. Polylactide, (PLA) is one the polymer has many

advantages such as excellent sustainability, degradability, biocompatibility, high strength and

Young’s modulus also good process ability compared to conventional petroleum-based

polymers, it also has disadvantages: the stiffness, brittleness or moisture sorption. Monomer

for polyactide are lactic acid and cyclic di-ester.

Furthermore, PLA-based materials can crystallised during processing above the glass

transition temperature, and hence, they are difficult to process, which limited their use on a

large scale. The highly ordered crystalline structure in PLA is the reason also for their lower

degradation.

To improve the properties of PLA-based materials (in which PLA provides polymeric

matrix) and accelerate their biodegradation process, PLA was blended with other

(bio)degradable polymer components.. These PLA based materials were applied as a

(bio)degradable short term packages such as rigid thermoformed containers, bottles, and in a

variety of other packaging applications . Thus, the main objective of this work has focused on

the comparison of the degradation behaviour of PLA with with synthetic poly[(R,S)-3-

hydroxybutyrate] ((R,S)-PHB), PLA/(R,S)-PHB blends in two different mediums in order to

understand the structural changes in the materials occurring during degradation. In which, this

polymerization undergoes step meschanisms.

 The degree of erosion of PLA-based rigid foils was observed to be strongly dependent

on the degradation environment. The synthetic (R,S)-PHB as a component of the blend with

PLA modifies their properties. However, blends of PLA with high-molar mass (R,S)-PHB are

immiscible. Decreases in the glass transition and melting temperatures were observed during

the degradation for all the investigated environments and enabled crystallisation at lower

temperatures. A decrease in the molar mass during the degradation process enabled the

formation of crystalline structures among the short polymer chains at lower temperatures, and

these structures increased the crystallinity of the material as the degradation time increased.

The obtained results indicate that both polymer blend components are degraded, but at

different rates. Thus, it is possible to control the degradation process by changing the

composition of polymer blend. During the modification of the compositions, the immiscibility

of PLA with high-molar mass (R,S)-PHB should be taken into consideration.

The synthetic (R,S)-PHB component in PLA-based rigid foil samples accelerates the

degradation process under industrial composting conditions. The biodegradation test under
industrial composting conditions reflects the actual conditions prevailing during organic

recycling; therefore, the results obtained are promising and further specialised tests of the PLA-

based rigid foil for the production of thermoformed rigid packaging as biodegradable short-

term tray for food products should be taken.