The Research On Paper-based Biodegradable Plastics

In order to solve the defect of degradation in plastics industry, this research put forward anidea that paper as raw material and zinc chloride as the solvent produce base materials by sol-geltechnology, afterwards together with plasticizing process used dioctyl phthalate （DEHP）, toproduce paper-based biodegradable plastics （PBP）. The results from scanning electronmicroscopy （SEM） revealed that base materials possess a composite structure with paper fibersas skeleton and gel fibers as filler. Effects of different process parameters such as ZnCl₂concentration, sol temperature, sol time, ageing time and plasticizer concentration were discussed.Moreover, behaviours including mechanical properties, biodegradability and SEM, XRD, FT-IRanalysis on base materials, were investigated to evaluate the feasibility of PBP. Results showedthat the best PBP achieved an excellent biodegradability that was almost100%loss in tensilestrength and57.32%in weight loss upon burial in a soil outdoors mixture for9weeks, byoptimal process parameters including zinc chloride of65%concentration, sol temperature of70℃, sol time of5s, ageing time of3h in air, gel and plasticizing time of2h in10%DEHPethanol solution.