An eco-friendly bioplastic film obtained from water hyacinth

Abstract

Water hyacinth is an invasive aquatic plant that causes adverse effects on the global environment. Due to high cellulose contents of water hyacinth, in this project aimed to covert water hyacinth to valuable raw materials for CMC-based bioplastic. Not only does the excess amount of water hyacinth reduces from natural water resources, but biodegradable CMC-bioplastic can also decrease the amount of plastic waste. Cellulose was extracted from water hyacinth followed by synthesis of carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) and preparation of bioplastic films, respectively. Gamma irradiation (1-10 kGy) was used to induce the crosslinking of CMC chains to improve the CMC bioplastic properties. The synthesized CMC from water hyacinth has comparable properties to the commercial CMC in that similar thermal stabilities, elemental components, and degradation mechanisms under controllable artificial weathering process. Further research regarding the role of CMC bioplastic derived from water hyacinth for food packaging would be promising applications.