Desarrollo de envases para lácteos a partir de bagazo de yuca.

Abstract

In recent years, environmental awareness has grown and consumers have opted for the purchase of environmentally friendly products, for example, the use of biodegradable packaging of co-products in the food industry. However, in many cases it is difficult to achieve heat resistance for these packages, for example, polylactic acid has a glass transition temperature of 60 °C, which prevents the storage and packaging of hot foods that exceed this temperature. The objective of the present work is to evaluate the use of cassava bagasse for the production of a biodegradable packaging for dairy products. Based on bibliographic information, technological alternatives for the development of dairy packaging from cassava bagasse were evaluated. It was determined that the use of commercial additives such as Dupont Biomax Strong has no significant effect on the increase of the glass transition point in biodegradable materials such as polylactic acid; however, it was shown that it is feasible to produce a biopolymer from an agroindustrial by-product such as cassava bagasse, and the improvement by increasing the molecular weight of the polylactic acid using a ring-opening polymerization process and the use of a catalyst such as tin octoate, since it is suitable for food packaging. This analysis marks a starting point for future research on biodegradable packaging from agro-industrial co-products.