Preparation and characterisation of bioplastic from oil palm trunk

Bioplastic is more friendly compared to conventional plastic. In terms of environment, bio-plastic will less harmful to human beings while conventional plastic is really harmful to human beings. Many researchers are trying to find better bio-based to commercialize the bioplastic. For example, the researcher using corn starch to produce bioplastic. In this research, starch from oil palm trunk (OPT) will use as plant-based plastics. The OPT was washed using distilled water and dried in the oven at 110 °C for 24 hours. The OPT was grinded using a sieving machine until the granular powder of OPT was formed. Next, the ratio between granular OPT and distilled water was 1:7 then added in the confined bioreactor. The constant pressure 50 kPa, the constant temperature which is 150 °C was set. This process takes 50 min to transfer the OPT into the starch water. After the extraction process, the different ratios of plasticizer which were 5 %, 15 %, and 25 % were mixed together using carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) as a plasticizer. Casting machine was used to produce the thin film from the starch water and CMC. The thin film was characterized using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA), Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR-ATR). The result has shown that the presence of similar functional groups from the previous study such as Inorganic phosphate, Aliphatic amino acid salt, Primary aliphatic alcohol and Secondary aliphatic alcohol. SEM has shown the morphology of the thin film with different amounts of a plasticizer such as 5 %, 15 % and 25 %. Last but not least, the result for TGA shown that different amount of residue left in the crucible and DSC proved that the heat release at different temperature depending on the composition of CMC in the thermoplastic starch film.