The effect of plasticizers towards the characteristics of methylcellulose film packaging

The usage of petroleum-based film packaging cause a serious environmental problem, which it will affect the human health as well as human especially marine life. The main objective of this study is to study the effect of different plasticizers on the methylcellulose (MC) based film food packaging. Sorbitol and red palm oil (RPO) are used as the plasticizers. The films were prepared by using solution-casting method. Then, the films are characterized on chemical properties by using FTIR, light transmission and transparency properties by using UV-Vis Spectrophotometer and tensile strength properties to observe the strength of the films. From the FTIR spectra, the presences of characteristics bands of MC structure are observed in all films. The result shows that sorbitol and RPO are exists in the MC structure. From UV-Vis study, MC/Sor films are more opaque compared to the MC/RPO films. The tensile strength of the film are decreasing as well as the elongation at break, which might occur due to the modified interactions between the plasticizers and the chemical structure of the film. The elastic modulus of pure MC is the highest compared to the other MC incorporated with plasticizers. Overall, MC are suitable to be used as raw materials of film food packaging and RPO can be used as the substitute of the sorbitol to incorporate with MC.