Composite Film Based on Pulping Industry Waste and Chitosan for Food Packaging

Ji-Dong Xu; Ya-Shuai Niu; Pan-Pan Yue; Ya-Jie Hu; Jing Bian; Ming-Fei Li; Feng Peng; Run-Cang Sun

doi:10.3390/ma11112264

Composite Film Based on Pulping Industry Waste and Chitosan for Food Packaging

Materials (Basel). 2018 Nov 13;11(11):2264. doi: 10.3390/ma11112264.

Authors

Ji-Dong Xu¹, Ya-Shuai Niu², Pan-Pan Yue³, Ya-Jie Hu⁴, Jing Bian⁵, Ming-Fei Li⁶, Feng Peng⁷, Run-Cang Sun⁸

Affiliations

¹ Beijing Key Laboratory of Lignocellulosic Chemistry, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China. xujidong@bjfu.edu.cn.
² Beijing Key Laboratory of Lignocellulosic Chemistry, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China. 18813076766@163.com.
³ Beijing Key Laboratory of Lignocellulosic Chemistry, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China. ypp1109@bjfu.edu.cn.
⁴ Beijing Key Laboratory of Lignocellulosic Chemistry, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China. huyajie0311@163.com.
⁵ Beijing Key Laboratory of Lignocellulosic Chemistry, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China. bianjing31@bjfu.edu.cn.
⁶ Beijing Key Laboratory of Lignocellulosic Chemistry, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China. limingfei@bjfu.edu.cn.
⁷ Beijing Key Laboratory of Lignocellulosic Chemistry, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China. fengpeng@bjfu.edu.cn.
⁸ Beijing Key Laboratory of Lignocellulosic Chemistry, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China. rcsun3@bjfu.edu.cn.

Abstract

Wood auto-hydrolysates (WAH) are obtained in the pulping process by the hydrothermal extraction, which contains lots of hemicelluloses and slight lignin. WAH and chitosan (CS) were introduced into this study to construct WAH-based films by the casting method. The FT-IR results revealed the crosslinking interaction between WAH and CS due to the Millard reaction. The morphology, transmittance, thermal properties and mechanical properties of composite WAH/CS films were investigated. As the results showed, the tensile strength, light transmittances and thermal stability of the WAH-based composite films increased with the increment of WAH/CS content ratio. In addition, the results of oxygen transfer rate (OTR) and water vapor permeability (WVP) suggested that the OTR and WVP values of the films decreased due to the addition of CS. The maximum value of tensile strengths of the composite films achieved 71.2 MPa and the OTR of the films was low as 0.16 cm³·μm·m^-2·24 h^-1·kPa^-1, these properties are better than those of other hemicelluloses composite films. These results suggested that the barrier composite films based on WAH and CS will become attractive in the food packaging application for great mechanical properties, good transmittance and low oxygen transfer rate.

Keywords: chitosan; composite films; food packaging; hemicelluloses; oxygen barrier property.