Cellulose fiber-reinforced starch biocomposites

There are many well-known methods to immobihze bacterial and fungal spores by entrapment inside various polymeric matrices prepared by chemical polymerization. The main disadvantage of these procedures is their inabihty to be used as immobilization technique for whole viable microorganism cells, by which it could be, generated a new potential efficiency for many biotechnological continuous processes [122]. 

Basically, the cellulose is the most widely distributed skeletal polysaccharide and represents about 50% of the cell wall material of plants. Beside hemicellulose and lignin, cellulose is a major component of agricultural wastes and municipal residues [123-125], The cellulose and hemicellulose comprise the major part of all green plants and this is the main reason for using such terms as cellulosic wastes or simply cellulosic s for those materials which are produced especially as agricultural crop residues, fmit and vegetable wastes from industrial processing, and other solid wastes from caimed food and drinks industries [125, 126]. 

In recent years, natural fibers have attracted much attention as reinforcements for both thermoplastic and thermosetting polymer composites. It should be pointed out that a lot of previous work focused on developing partially biodegradable composite materials including natural fibers-reinforced nonbiodegradable matrices 

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Wan WK, Hotter JL, Millon LE, Guhados G (2006) Bacterial cellulose and its nanocomposites for biomedical applications. In Oksman K, Sain M (eds) Cellulose nanocomposites. Processing, characterization, and properties. American Chemical Society, Washington DC Wan YZ, Luo H, He F, Liang H, Huang Y, Li XL (2009) Mechanical, moisture absorption, and biodegradation behaviors of bacterial cellulose fiber-reinforced starch biocomposites. Compos Sci Technol 69 1212-1217... 

Extensive research has been undertaken in blending different polymers to obtain new products having some of the desired properties of each component. Among protein- and polysaccharide-based green materials, those made from soy protein (Maruthi et al. 2014 Ghidelli et al. 2014 Behera et al. 2012) and starch (Katerinopoulou et al. 2014 Flores-Hemandez et al. 2014) have been extensively studied for and their physiochemical properties been analyzed. The literature review clearly shows that development of biodegradable biopolymer-based materials based on these materials can not only solve the white pollution problem but also ease the overdependence on petroleum resources. This chapter provides a brief overview of the preparation, properties, and application of cellulose fiber-reinforced soy protein-based and starch-based biocomposites. 

Alvarez, V. A, Kenny, J. M., and Vazquez, A. (2004) Creep behavior of biocomposites based on sisal fiber reinforced cellulose derivatives/ starch blends, Polym Compos, 25,280-288. 

Zainuddin, S., Ahmad, I., and Kai rzadeh, H. (2013). Cassava starch biocomposites reinforced with cellulose nanocrystals from kenaf fibers. Composite Interfaces, 20(3), 189-199. doi 10.1080/15685543. 2013.766122. 

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