Enhancement of Poly (Vinyl Alcohol) membrane packaging material by using beta-cyclodextrin

Abstract

Poly Vinyl Alcohol (PVA) is becoming popular in these days, due to its low price, easy workability and chemical properties. On the other hand, PVA is categorized as biodegradable polymer. Hence, most of the researchers have been interested to utilize the PVA and PVA blend in food packaging industrial. They can be very good alternative for packaging in food industrials due to their properties. This research is considered to enhance the properties of available packaging materials using blending PVA and ß-Cyclodextrin (ß-CD). However, in industries the pure PVA is powder and the PVA additives has different mechanical and chemical characteristics as compared to the pure PVA. For solving this problem, the existing commercial method is to cast membrane. Nowadays, the cast technology is used worldwide due to low cost, simple operation, excellent flatness and uniform thickness distribution. Therefore, this research has been conducted to study and analyze the mechanical and chemical characteristics of the pure PVA and the blend PVA with ß-CD for using on food packaging. The research is divided into two parts. In the first part, the interfacial adhesion at different ratio between PVA and ß-CD was studied. In the second part, the effect of different ratio of ß-CD of new blend was investigated. Then, the mechanical and chemical properties of the new blend PVA have been analyzed. Theses analyses have been conducted by tensile, differential scanning calorimeter, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and contact angle test. The results are shown that the proposed blend PVA with ß-CD are compatible. On the other hand, it shows that using ß-CD can improve the thermal, mechanical properties of the packaging, which will be beneficial for the shelf life of food products.