The manufacturing of renewable products that biodegrade at the end of life is of great interest, given the severity of plastic pollution and the increasing production and usage of non-renewable polymers. One promising alternative is polylactic acid (PLA). PLA is a naturally degradable polyester that when held under specific industrial compositing conditions will biodegrade. However, some major drawbacks to the usage of PLA include, it does not compost fast enough for industrial composters, and it has a lower melting point making it somewhat impossible to be recycled when combined with other polymeric materials. The incorporation of CNFs as carbon-neutral additives could be a solution for modifying PLA’s degradation mechanism and recyclability once formed into composite materials. Among the many good properties, CNFs are renewable, biodegradable, thermally stable, and light in weight. Although many reports have investigated the influence of CNFs on PLA composite’s mechanical performance, there is a lack of information on the impact of CNFs and CNFs loading on PLA’s degradation mechanism during end-of-life processing. In this study, we investigate the impact of CNFs loading on the end-of-life processing of PLA composites. In short, incubation studies conducted under industrial ASTM processing conditions revealed significant changes in the degradation mechanism and compositing rate for CNF-reinforced PLA composites.

Influence of CNF on the biodegredation behavior of PLA composites

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