Development of biodegradable composite chitosan-based films incorporated with xylan and carvacrol for food packaging application

•A biodegradable composite film has been developed for food packaging application.•Only bio-based material (Chitosan, Xylan, Carvacrol and acetic acid) used in this study.•Only 0.5 %v/v concentration acidic acid (at least 50% less than previous studies) showed to be sufficient to dissolve chitosan. As high concentrations of acidic acid can be harmful to plants, animals, and aquatic life, therefore our product is more eco-friendly compared to chitosan-based films.•Mechanical properties, Thermal analysis, and Antibacterial activity analysis have been investigated in this study.•The film possesses high flexibility/toughness which satisfy the packaging requirements. This paper presents an experimental study on the development of uniform and homogeneous composite chitosan based flexible films containing various amount of xylan from 0 to 25 wt percent and carvacrol. The influence of the addition of xylan on the composite films was evaluated by measuring the tensile strength, moduli and elongation at break. The tensile strength and moduli of composite films containing 20 wt. % increase considerably by 73.9% and 66.8%, respectively. The elongation at break also increases considerably with the addition of xylan, the maximum value of 4.5% was obtained with film containing 8 wt.% xylan. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) indicates that the addition of xylan reduces the rate of degradation and shifts the thermal degradation peak from 290.7 to 276.8 °C for the film containing 20 wt.% xylan. Investigation on the antibacterial activity showed that Tetracycline reference control is effective in controlling the growth the bacteria while the incorporation of carvacrol in chitosan xylan composite is not effective.