The effect of glycerol content on mechanical properties,surface morphology and water absorption of thermoplastic films from tacca leontopetaloides starch

Tacca leontopetaloides is a new plant source of starch and has high potential to produce film of thermoplastic. in this study,thermoplastic starch (tps) derived from t.leontopetaloides was developed with glycerol as plasticizer through casting method at temperature range from 85 °c to 90 °c and enhanced with sulphur vulcanization method. it was found that the addition of 5%,10%,15%,20% and 25% (v/v) of glycerol into t.leontopetaloides starch had affected the mechanical properties,surface morphology,and water absorption of the thermoplastic films. in the mechanical properties study,the tps films have the highest tensile strength (47.96 mpa) at 5% glycerol content in the formulation. conversely,the tps films have increasing value of elongation at break (eab) with increasing glycerol concentration with the higher eab obtained at 25% glycerol content (52.90%). the morphology of thermoplastic film was examined by using scanning electron microscopy (sem). as glycerol content increased,thermoplastic films showed smoother surface,homogenous and good distribution. in water absorption test,tps films showed lower affinity to water absorption at lower glycerol content. the weight of the tps films increased ranging from 80.3% to 107.4% after 12 hour of immersion in water. it can be concluded that,glycerol significantly affected the properties of tps film within the range of glycerol concentration studied. © 2017 penerbit utm press. all rights reserved.