Utilization of brown alga (Sargassum plagiophyllum) as an efficient reinforcement material for application in wheat gluten biocomposites

In this work, brown alga (Sargassum plagiophyllum) was utilized as a reinforcement material to produce wheat gluten (WG) biocomposites. The effect of brown alga powder (BP) content and sonication treatments of BP on the properties of the obtained WG biocomposites were characterized. Adding 1 wt% BP to WG increased the tensile strength by 77% compared to neat WG and could delay the degradation process of the WG biocomposites due to the good interaction between BP and the WG matrix. When the time and amplitude of BP sonication was increased, the tensile strength of the obtained WG biocomposites slightly decreased, but still remained higher than the tensile strength of the neat WG. Therefore, this work presents an efficient reinforcement material and a potential treatment process to produce promising alternative biocomposites for the production of environment friendly materials.