Chitosan films modified with nano-cotton fibers and/or olive oil

MARIANA PEREDA; NORMA E. MARCOVICH; ALAIN DUFRESNE; MIRTA I. ARANGUREN

Lake balaton

Conferencia; International Conference on Bio-based Polymers and Composites; 2012

Environmental concerns enhance and stimulate the use of renewable resources forproducing economically convenient applications to maintain or even improve life quality.In particular chitosan, a cationic polysaccharide, natural, non-toxic, biodegradable and availablecommercially, has been employed in a variety of applications. Chitosan is frequentlyused as emulsifier to uniformly stabilize oil droplets in emulsion systems. Chitosan filmshave a selective permeability to gases (CO2 and O2) and good mechanical properties. However,due to their hydrophilic nature, they are poor barriers to moisture, which limits their uses.Biopolymers like chitosan can be combined with other polymers resulting in newcomposite materials with improved properties and diversified utilization areas. In our case,the use of natural fibers is a strategy to improve mechanical and water vapor permeationproperties while the incorporation of olive oil is expected to reduce the film hydrophilicity.Hence, the aim of this work is to analyze the effect of adding olive oil and cotton nanofiberson properties of chitosan based films.