Triticale starch based bioplastics

Triticale is being developed and aimed as an industrial crop and biorefinery feedstock for the Canadian manufacturing industry within the CTBI network (The Canadian Triticale Biorefinery Initiative). The fundamental understanding of the triticale starch and TPS (thermoplastic starch) properties will greatly help the development of triticale starch-based materials with improved properties. In this paper the potential of triticale starch for the TPS/polymer blend fabrication was explored and compared with wheat starch in terms of starch morphology, crystallization structure, and TPS rheological properties. Very similar results were obtained for the triticale starch comparing with the wheat starch. This confirms that studies made with wheat starch should be directly applicable to triticale. The possibility of using triticale to make 100% biobased blown film was investigated using a small lab-scale blown film line. Film thickness of 25 \u3bcm was obtained successfully for the triticale starch based PLA/TPS blends, in which sorbitol/glycerol mixture was used as plasticizers for TPS and 2% CESA chain extender to chain extend PLA in the blends. The successful development of the triticale starch based bio-materials will rapidly and significantly increase the net usages of biomass resources based on triticale, promote valued products and increase the sustainable development in the agricultural sector in Canada.Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye