Open Access

ARTICLE

Bio-Adhesives Combined with Lotus Leaf Fiber to Prepare Bio-Composites for Substituting the Plastic Packaging Materials

Ke Shi^1,2, Luyang Wang^1,2, Ruige Qi^1,2, Chunxia He^1,2,*

1 College of Engineering, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, 210031, China
2 Key Laboratory of Intelligent Agricultural Equipment in Jiangsu Province, Nanjing, 210031, China

* Corresponding Author: Chunxia He. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Food Packaging Materials Based on Renewable Resources)

Journal of Renewable Materials 2022, 10(5), 1257-1268. https://doi.org/10.32604/jrm.2022.017891

Received 15 June 2021; Accepted 22 August 2021; Issue published 22 December 2021

Abstract

This work was aim to prepare a packing material from natural resources to reduce the environment pollution caused by plastics. Four bio-adhesives (guar gum, sodium alginate, agar and chitosan) were combined with lotus leaf fibers to prepare degradable composites, respectively. The mechanical properties, moisture absorption profiles and the thermal conductivity of the composites were studied and the cross section morphology and the thermal properties of the composites were analyzed. The Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) results showed that the polar groups such as –OH and –COO^– in bio-adhesives can form hydrogen bond with –OH in lotus leaf fibers to connect the two components. The combination of agar and lotus leaf fiber was good, and their composite had the best mechanical properties, with the tensile strength, flexural strength and impact strength of 2.05, 5.9 MPa and 4.29 kJ·m⁻², respectively, and the composite had a low moisture absorption profile, and the equilibrium moisture absorption rate was 32.32%. The lotus leaf fiber/agar composite (LAC) had an excellent comprehensive performance and it was non-toxic, degradable and thermal insulating, which indicated that it had the potential to use in packaging field to substitute plastics.

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Keywords

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