Main Article Content
Abstract
Tropical starch has a big potential to be raw material for biodegradable packaging film. Tropical starch can be fermented to produce lactic acid then lactic acid also can be polymerized to produce poly lactic acid (PLA). Besides, chitosan also has strategic potential to be anti-microbial agent that can be blended with tropical starch and PLA as a anti-microbial packaging film to increase food preservation. Chitosan used in this research has degree of deacetilation (DD): 76.466 %. The research yield show that biodegradable packaging film made of tropical starch-PLA-chitosan composites with added plasticizer 1 % has good enough mechanical characteristic; tensile strength 104.42 N/m2, elongation 33.799 %, elastic modulus 309.543 N/m2, although it still need to improved so it can be compared with conventional packaging films. The packaging film has relatively sort time to defend of microbial attack. This research is still the beginning, so it still needs to improve especially in synthesizing eco-friendly packaging film made of tropical starch-PLA-chitosan composites with qualified properties.
Keywords : tropical starch-PLA-chitosan composites, eco-friendly packaging film