THREE LAYER FILMS BASED ON GELATIN AND POLYLACTIC ACID. 1. PREPARATION AND CARACTERIZATION.

J.F. MARTUCCI; R.A. RUSECKAITE

Alicante- España

Conferencia; BIOPOL 2009. 2nd. International Conference on Biodegradable Polymers and Sustainable Composites.; 2009

Gelatin (Ge) is an animal protein, inexpensive and totally biodegradable that is obtained by partial denaturation of collagen. Gelatin exhibits good film-forming ability and excellent oxygen and aroma barrier properties at low relative humidity as well as fairly good mechanical properties appropriate for the production of bio-packaging materials. However, as most biopolymers, the main general resistance to further use gelatin - based films in food packaging is their limited water resistance (Gennadios, 2002). An alternative to overcome this drawback is to combine protein-based films with films obtained from non-biodegradable (Elsabee et al., 2008) or moisture resistant biodegradable polymer –based films into a laminated to exploit the advantages of both polymers, with fewer processing steps (Rhim et al., 2006, Martucci & Ruseckaite, 2009 a, 2009 b). Our current work is focused on developing three-layer films with plasticized gelatin as inner layer and poly(lactic acid) (PLA) films as outer a moisture resistant layers. The multilayer film is anticipated to have at least equal performance than that of the commercial laminate films, but with the additional benefit of being biodegradable at the end of film life.