Improved miscibility of low‐density polyethylene/chitosan blends through variation in the compounding length

Abstract

Synthetic biopolymer blends are gaining interest in the packaging industry because the incorporation of natural materials imparts biodegradable properties to films. In this study, polyethylene/chitosan (chitosan) films with thicknesses of about 0.3 6 0.01 mm were fabricated via compression molding. The effects of the variation in the length of compounding as a function of the length/diameter (l/d) ratio (15:1, 30:1, 45:1, 60:1, and 75:1) were investigated. The experimental results show that a higher degree of miscibility of the blends was achieved with increasing compounding length; this led to improved mechanical properties in the films, and this was verified by the statistical analysis of data with the analysis of variance procedure. The tensile strength (TS) increased by about 25%, whereas the elongation at break (E break ) increased by twofold. Films fabricated from blends compounded with an l/d ratio of 60:1 had the highest TS and E break values, and the TS was comparable to that of low-density polyethylene films. V C 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2016, 133, 43796.