Paper presented at the 52nd CFCS Annual Meeting, Guadeloupe, July 10-16, 2016
Figure 2: Starch Extracted from dried cassava tubers Starch is a polysaccharide comprising glucose monomers of amylose and amylopectin joined in Îą 1,4 linkages (Starch n.d.). The amylopectin tends to prevent the starch from plasticizing and therefore needs to be broken down in order to produce the plastic. This was obtained by using 0.1mol/dmÂł hydrochloric acid. Figure 3 contains photos of the bioplastic produced from the cassava peel.
Figure 3 : production of bioplastic from the cassava peel waste peel of Manihot esculenta (cassava) yielded 230.11g (20.9% by weight) of starch. The starch extracted from the waste peel was successfully used to produce a bioplastic film. This shows that a waste product can be successfully transformed into natural polymer plastic. Future work will entail mechanical testing of the bioplastic to determine its comparability with commercial petroleum-based plastics. Bibliografic references Making a Plastic From Potato Starch - Making The Plastic. n.d. http://pubs.rsc.org/en/journals?key=title&value=current (accessed 03.22.2016) Starch. n.d. http://www.britannica.com/science/starch (accessed 06.27.2016) What are Bioplastics? 2016. http://www.bio-plastics.org/en/information--knowledge-a-market-know-how/basics/whatare-bioplastics (accessed 06.02.2016)
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