SYNTHESIS AND EVALUATION OF A CHICKEN FEATHER KERATIN BASED BIOFILM PLASTICIZED BY SORBITOL BLENDED WITH GLYCEROL.

Abstract

Biomass has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by replacing fossil fuels. The exponential growth of the human population has led to the accumulation of non-degradable waste materials across our planet. Bioplastic synthesized from only keratin has fragile and less flexible and can be improved by adding starch and plasticizer. In this study, chicken feather keratin, mango seed starch, and glycerol and sorbitol were used. Proximate analysis of chicken feather was crude lipids (0.79%), total ash (1.45%), crude fiber (2%), moisture (11.9%), and crude protein (89.5%). The optimum process variables for keratin yield were 6hr., 50oC temperatures, which gives 79% maximum yield. The composition of the extracted keratin was characterized using FTIR, the crystalline nature of keratin was characterized by using XRD, and keratin's thermal stability was characterized using TGA. The starch extracted from mango seed had 2.17% crude protein, 6.66% crude lipids, 8.5% total ash, 10.5% moisture, 34.37% crude fiber, and 37.8% carbohydrates. The film was synthesized by conducting 20 experiments by using CCD response surface rotatable (k<6) and analyzed by design expert 11, by conducting three factors of dry oven temperature(35-65oC), plasticizer(GLY and SOR) concentration (20- 50%)w/w and starch concentration(30-70%) w/w of keratin (7g) basis. The three responses were tensile strength(TS), water absorption(WA), and elongation at the break (EA) of the synthesized bioplastic film. The result obtained in the range were (10-17.86MPa) TS, (8.99-20%) EA and (19.45-27.5%) WA. The obtained results at the optimal point were 17.76MPa TS, 8.98% EA and 19.44% WA at a combination of 49.94oC dry oven temperature, 34.60% plasticizer (GLY and SOR), and 49.94% Starch concentrations. Moisture, solubility, transparency, and thickness of the film were determined. The film was also characterized using TGA, XRD and FTIR. This study indicates that higher strength, low water absorbent, and good thermally stable bioplastic film can be produced from chicken feather keratin via mango seed starch by blending two different plasticizers (GLY and SOR)