Producing of biodegradable plastic films from un-marketable potato tubers

Abstract

: This study was conducted to reduce the volume of solid wastes by using unmarketable potato tubers for producing biodegradable plastic films to be substitute oil based plastics “OBP” which is often not biodegradable. Starch based plastic films “SBP” were produced with different concentrations of glycerol (5, 10,15, 20,25, 30, 99.5%v/v) as a plasticizer. The physical properties of SBP including thickness, density, water absorption, biodegradability, were studied, as well as mechanical properties including tensile strength, modulus of elasticity, elongation % and the required energy for firm were also investigated compared with OBP samples. The results showed that the maximum value of extracted starch was 13.5% obtained by blending potato tubers. SBP films with elevated glycerol concentration increased the sample thickness but decreased its density. Glycerol 20% gave the best flexi-ble compact structure SBP films. Average thickness and density SBP film (20% glycerol) were 0.25 mm and 80.11 Kg/m 3 respectively. Meanwhile, the