Production of bioplastic from cassava peel with different concentrations of glycerol and CaCO3 as filler

Bioplastic is created to overcome plastic contamination while maintaining the characteristics of plastics which are flexible, cost effective and durable. In this study, bioplastic was formulated by using agriculture waste from cassava peel. Three different concentration of glycerol were set up at 20%, 30% and 40% with constant amount of CaCO3 (filler) were used for the optimization. The characterization of the bioplastic was carried out using FTIR analysis. Each sample shows similarities in spectra, indicating similar chemical composition of functional group present - which are hydroxyl group in alcohol and phenol (O-H), aliphatic saturated hydrocarbon chain (C-H) and ester, ether, carboxylic acid as well as anhydride group (C-O). In mechanical tests, the bioplastics are divided into tensile test, water absorption test and soil burial degradation test. Through tensile test, the bioplastic with 20% of glycerol shows the highest strength up to 5.82 ± 1.00 MPa, with Young's modulus at 99.79±42.03 MPa and tensile strain at 10.34±2.43%. Through water absorption test, the highest level of water absorbance was found to be at 40% glycerol addition at 28.64±0.16% meanwhile the lowest level of absorption was at 20% which is 24.49±0.21%. Even though the 40% glycerol shows the highest degradation rate, it was found that the 20% glycerol yielded higher mechanical properties and could maintain the characteristics of plastics better than the 40% glycerol.