T. Côto1, I. Moura1, A. de Sá1,*, C. Vilarinho2, A. V. Machado1
Journal of Renewable Materials, Vol.6, No.7, pp. 688-696, 2018, DOI:10.32604/JRM.2018.00006
Abstract Biopolymers exhibit unique properties and can be produced from plants’ and crops’ wastes. Cellulose has been used for the production of sustainable materials, nevertheless due to the difficulty inherent to its extraction, several methods have been studied in order to optimize the process. Therefore, this paper reports the extraction of natural polymers from food sector agro-food wastes, including cellulose, following a green chemistry aproach. The cellulose extracted from pumpkin peel was acetylated and dispersed in a polylactic acid (PLA) matrix. The developed materials were characterized in terms of their structure, morphology and thermal stability. The More >