Polihidroxibutirato plastificado com oligomero de poliéster
In 2021, the global production of petroleum-based plastic reached over 400 million metric tons (Mt) year, the accumulation of these non-biodegradable plastics in the environment is a global problem. Polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) offers many advantages over traditional polymers as it is bio-based, biodegradable and non-toxic. The (PHB) belongs to the class of hydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) and its obtained by the synthesis of CO2 as an energy reserve inside the cells in many bacteria. This polymer plays an important role in medical and industrial applications with properties comparable to synthetic polyester and polypropylene. But, the low thermal stability and narrow processing window limit the PHB use. The present work proposes to analyze the effect of two linear-chain polyester oligomers, called low molar mass polyester (PES) and polylactic acid (PLA), at three concentrations (10, 20 and 30% by weight) on PHB. The concentrations of polymeric plasticizers obtained by solubilization and characterized by thermal analyzes such as differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), to verify the improvement in thermal transitions with reduction of Tg and Tm as function of the plasticizer concentration, which can ease material handling. Polarized Optical Microscopy (POM) and XRD used to verify the influence of plasticizers on PHB morphologies, and in the tensile test occured an improvement in the elongation at break with the addition of concentrations of plasticizers, and PES proved to be the The most promising of the two with an optimized condition of 20%, in which there was a decrease in modulus of elasticity of up to 72% and an increase in maximum elongation of 467%.