Acetylated xylan from sugarcane bagasse: advancing bioplastic formation with enhanced water resistance

The environment has been significantly impacted by the extraction of natural resources and generation of agro-industrial waste. Therefore, the handling and transformation of waste have a high potential to replace petroleum-based packaging with biopackaging. Hemicellulose is an agro-industrial waste that is capable of forming a film/bioplastic with hydrophilic characteristics owing to the hydroxyl groups present in the molecule. Thus, the present study aimed to evaluate the effects of xylan acetylation on film formation by manipulating the main process variables such as catalyst concentration and reaction time. Consequently, the effects of acetylation were evaluated on the generated film (hydrophobicity and mechanical strength) and compared to films of natural xylan, starch, and starch structured with natural xylan. The films formed with acetylated xylan showed high moisture resistance, with an 80.70% reduction in moisture absorption and an 85.63% reduction in solubility compared with non-acetylated xylan. In addition, an increase in the thermal stability of the films resulted in a maximum degradation temperature of ~ 330 °C. Acetylated xylan can be used as reinforcement particles for matrices of biological origin, resulting in an improvement in the physicochemical properties of the resulting composites.