Effect of Glycerol as plastizicing agent on the mechanical properties of oil palm ash/polyvinyl alcohol blend film

Abstract

Plastic has been widely used and become important material in our daily life. Majority of the plastics used are petroleum-based which exposed threat to the environment due to their non-biodegradability characteristic. Therefore, this study aimed to produce biodegradable film as replacement to the costly commercial biodegradable plastics. The biodegradable film was synthesised from polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), oil palm ash (OPA) and glycerol that act as plasticizer by solution casting method. OPA used as a filler. Thus, it reduce the cost of plastic film synthesised by PVA. While glycerol was used to increase the tensile strength of the film produced. The tensile strength of PVA/OPA blend films in the presence of glycerol as plasticizer (37.31 MPa) basically higher than pure PVA/OPA pure film (36.08 MPa) at optimal percentage of glycerol composition obtained was 10% using Response Surface Methodology (RSM).