Development and characterisation of a new biodegradable edible film made from kefiran, an exopolysaccharide obtained from kefir grains

By M. Ghasemlou, F. Khodaiyan, A. Oromiehie, M. Yarmand. 2011

144 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract This study examined the feasibility of using kefiran, an exopolysaccharide obtained from kefir grains, as a new film-forming material. Kefiran-based films, with and without glycerol as plasticizer, were prepared by a casting and solvent-evaporation method. To study the impact of the incorporation of glycerol into the film matrix, physical, mechanical, and thermal properties of the films were investigated. As expected, the increase of glycerol concentration from 15% to 35% w/w increased extensibility but decreased tensile strength, implying higher mobility of polymer chains by the plasticizing effect of glycerol. Water vapour permeability of films was found to increase as the plasticizer content increased. Glass transition temperatures decreased as a result of plasticization as glycerol content increased. The properties of the films were related to their microstructure, which was observed by scanning electron microscopy. Thus, it was observed that plasticizer is a significant factor in the properties of these films and their food technology applications.

Subfields: Biomaterials

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/218b746e97cfd5ad9560a96cea5de26f9d9bedfb

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In Biomaterials

1. Hayden Webb
2. Elena P. Ivanova
3. R. Crawford
4. Jaimys Arnott
5. S. Zhong
6. Joshua M. Pearce

Citations in the corpus

• Plastic Degradation and Its Environmental Implications with Special Reference to Poly(ethylene terephthalate) (2012, background): “caprolactone [89], proteins [90], cellulose acetate [91] and other polysaccharides [92], and in many cases, the mechanical durability of these polymers has been improved through addition of plasticisers [90,92] or nanoparticles [89] or by carefully controlling production conditions [84].”