Final Project [Week02]¶
Due to the limitation and requirement to produce the plastic lumber I have decided to switch this project into another project that is more accessible.
Banana Plastic¶
Abstract¶
Plastic industry is considered one of the most important industries because plastic is an important factor in the making of many useful products such as sheets, tubes, rods, slabs, building blocks and domestic products. However, the limitation of oil has been an intermittent worry in plastic production nowadays. One of the sources of plastic production is fuel. However, the synthetic plastic cause harm to the people and the environment. It has contributed as one of the major causes of pollution to the surface of earth. Therefore, new alternative for the production of plastic have been studied. This study is conducted mainly to develop a bioplastic from food waste, banana peels.
Background¶
Banana peels based bio-plastic is a lower cost, more productive and boosted efficient project. The production of bio-plastic from banana peels because it is one of the fruits that are very rich in starch (𝐶6𝐻10𝑂5 ), which consists of two different types of polymer chains, called amylose and amylopectin, made up of adjoined glucose molecules that are bonded together forming the plastic. Massive amount of plastic can be generated due to the huge amount of unused peels which represent about 30%-40% of the fruit mass.
Safety¶
biodegradable, non-toxic, and inexpensive. Besides that, cellulose has thermal stability, the degradation of cellulose led to the lost weight of 90% around 393 to 723 K.
The aim¶
The aim of my work is to recycle waste biomaterial to be used as the main source of plastic in Fablab.
Method¶
There are two methods to obtain the bioplastic materials. The first one is mixing up the banana peels paste with chemical-based materials and glycerol as plasticizer. For the second experimental by mixing up the banana peels paste with natural-based materials and glycerol as plasticizer. This is a list of experiments that were conducted by different researchers that shows how manipulating the ratios can change the overall look and texture of the final product.
The importance of this project¶
First of all, being able to create a useful material from materials that is subjected to be a waste is always a beneficial thing. There are a lot of areas of testing and improvement that can be implemented in the process of making the banana plastic (the subject is flexible for changes not stricted to one method). For example, adding Gum Arabic makes the extraction of bioplastic easier and more flexible.
Timeline¶
This is subject to be changed. However, for the time being it might be around 3 weeks.
Why it is not popular¶
The utilization of agro-waste for the development of bioplastics is still limited due to the unsystematic and low costeffective waste management system, limited data on waste generation, and low production yield compared to food feedstock. It is believed that the prospect of agro-waste as feedstock for bioplastics will improve with the advancement in biotechnology and government intervention.