Pectin is a versatile polysaccharide with important applications in nutrition and foods. Pectin is also an abundant renewable resource, especially in Brazil where it occurs as an agro-waste of the fruit juice and sugarcane production. The current work describes the use of pectin as a feedstock for obtaining biodegradable plastics by continuous casting. This is an emerging and eco-friendly method for producing thin polymer films at large scale. Different pectin solutions containing the plasticizer glycerol at contents of 15 and 30 wt.% were prepared and converted into plastics on a labcoater machine previously set at conveyor speed of 0.10 – 0.20 m min<sup>-1</sup>, wet layer thickness of 1.5 mm and temperature of 80 - 120 °C. Pectin plastics were characterized by thickness measurements and uniaxial tensile tests at relative humidity (RH) of 50 and 75%. It was observed that pectin plastics exhibited uniform thickness both at longitudinal and transverse casting direction, regardless the glycerol content. Pure pectin plastic exhibited tensile strength of 44 MPa and Young’s modulus of 2.7 GPa. Both mechanical properties changed gradually to 17.9 MPa and 0.6 GPa at 50% RH and to 16.7 MPa and 0.3 GPa at 75% RH with increasing glycerol content up to 30 wt.%. Moreover, a substantial increment in elongation was observed in plasticised pectin plastics, from 2.7% at 0 wt.% glycerol to 21% at 30 wt.% glycerol, suggesting biodegradable plastics with notable flexibility. Such tendencies in elongation were verified for both RH levels. These outcomes highlight the continuous casting potential towards the production of biodegradable pectin plastics at a rate as fast as 20 cm min<sup>-1</sup>. This leads to environmentally friendly plastics with broad range of mechanical properties for various applications, including food packaging.

Scaled-up production of biodegradable pectin plastics using continuous casting

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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