Preparation of starch-based bioplastic from local sweet potato with plasticizer and filler / Ainaa’ Nashuha Shahrul Hazaromi

Plastic is widely used in many purposes such as packaging, building and construction, electronics, aerospace, and transportation. However, plastic waste can cause pollution and has emerged a major environmental concern. The use of bioplastics as an alternative to synthetic plastic from petrochemical sources. In comparison to conventional plastics, bioplastics provide several benefits, including a smaller carbon footprint, more energy efficiency, greater biodegradability, and greater adaptability. Among the options, starch is a great replacement for synthetic polymers. This is due to its abundance in nature, low cost, lack of toxicity, renewable nature, biocompatibility, and ability to create films. In this study, starch-based bioplastic was prepared from sweet potato (Ipomoea Batatas L.Lam) with glycerol and sorbitol as plasticizer and wood dust as filler using casting method. Then, the optimal conditions for preparing starch-based bioplastics with minimum percentage water adsorption were established using a three-level Box- Behnken design (BBD) as the design of experiment (DOE). The important parameters used for this study were starch, plasticizer, and filler. For determination of percentage water absorption, the prepared bioplastic was leave in distilled water for 24 hours and weighted. The statistical analysis was conducted using Design Expert software. Based on the obtained response surface linear model, percentage absorption of water is depending on amount of starch, plasticizer, and filler. The response surface method was proved to be useful to obtain optimum conditions in preparing starch-based bioplastic. In addition, there is a lot of potential for the use of starch-based materials in the production of bioplastics, which is something that will help safeguard the environment.