Preparation and characterization of rice husk derived cellulose and polyvinyl alcohol blended heat sealable packaging film

Abstract

A greener route for efficient extraction of chemically modified cellulose (CMC) from rice husk has been demonstrates. The extracted CMC is solution blended with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) under optimized conditions to prepare CMC blended polyvinyl alcohol (CMC-b-PVA) packaging film. Further, the developed film has been characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectrophotometer, shore D, optical microscope, universal testing machine and soil burial test. The obtained results disclose the significant improvements in the mechanical properties by 1.49 times and reduced water vapor transmission rate by 33.33 % than PVA film due to reinforcement effect of CMC in PVA matrix. Furthermore, a heat sealed packet from the developed CMC-b-PVA film has been developed, which exhibits the comparable properties to commercially used flexible polyvinyl chloride films in packaging of edible packets along with optimized water barrier and biodegradable nature.