The manufacture of bioplastics is of great interest because of the availability of renewable biomass from agricultural and biofuel industry byproducts.  Bioplastic formulations have been made by reacting carboxycellulose with soy protein feedstocks followed by compression molding the solid product into desired shapes. However, soy protein has a very low number of free amines per polymer chain thereby limiting the bonding with the carboxycellulose.  We are now exploring the use of small diamine compounds to crosslink carboxycellulose. The reaction of ethylenediamine with carboxycellulose and subsequent compression molding yielded samples with bulk densities of approximately 1.49 g/cm3; this is a modest increase over bioplastics made with carboxycellulose and soy protein. Tensile strengths are similar to those of soy protein-carboxycellulose bioplastics, ranging from 10.10 to 16.33 MPa. Further analysis of the diamine-carboxycellulose composites includes infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, and differential scanning calorimetry.

Crosslinking of carboxylated cellulose with diamine compounds

245th National Meeting (2013)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.