Biodegradable films produced from the bacterial polysaccharide FucoPol

Abstract

FucoPol, an exopolysaccharide produced by Enterobacter A47, grown in bioreactor with glycerol as carbon source, was used with citric acid to obtain biodegradable films by casting. The films were characterized in terms of optical, hygroscopic, mechanical and barrier properties. These films have shown to be transparent, but with a brown tone, imparting small colour changes when applied over coloured surfaces. They were hydrophilic, with high permeability to water vapour (1.01×10(-11)mol/msPa), but presented good barrier properties to oxygen and carbon dioxide (0.7×10(-16)molm/m(2)sPa and 42.7×10(-16)molm/m(2)sPa, respectively). Furthermore, films have shown mechanical properties under tensile tests characteristic of ductile films with high elongation at break, low tension at break and low elastic modulus. Although the obtained results are promising, films properties can be improved, namely by testing alternative plasticizers, crosslinking agents and blends with other biopolymers. Taking into account the observed ductile mechanical properties, good barrier properties to gases when low water content is used and their hydrophilic character, it is foreseen a good potential for FucoPol films to be incorporated as inner layer of a multilayer packaging material.

Keywords: Bacterial exopolysaccharide; Barrier properties; Films characterization.