• biodegradation
• DSC
• film blowing
• injection molding
• PBAT
• SSE
• starch
• tensile test
• TGA
• TPS
• TSE

Approximately 365 million tons of plastic materials are produced annually worldwide. The combination of their strength, light weight, flexibility, and stability accounts for their commercial success. However, due to its high carbon footprint and resistance to biodegradation, traditional plastic production and use are associated with numerous issues. The necessity to create sustainable materials to replace fossil-based and non-biodegradable plastics is being brought to light by the growing public awareness of plastic pollution and its effects on the environment.
Starch offers a viable solution that aligns the trends with the increasing demand for ecofriendly alternatives to conventional plastics, due to its low cost, biodegradability, and abundantly available renewable sources. Starch has certain disadvantages, though, like its high crystallinity, limited deformability, and aging. These characteristics restrict its processability and doesn’t allow to have a stable secondary shaping and stable final material properties (filmed and injection moulded materials), as a result, it limits wide range of large-scale applications, such as blown-film packaging applications. Making polymer blends with a high molecular weight polymer which improves the stability of the secondary shaping processes seems a good way to overcome TPS's intrinsic limitations.
Studies have been conducted on TPS blends with various flexible biopolymers. The biodegradable polymer poly(butylene-adipate-terephthalate) (PBAT) has gained the most attention among all the biopolyesters, due to its properties such as biodegradability, biocompatibility, flexibility, and relatively simple melt processing, particularly for filmblowing and injection moulding (targeted processings for the secondary shape of the blends).
PBAT allows for slower reorganization of starch chains and slower plasticizer migration, allowing for the development of a more stable and biodegradable blends.
The first plasticizer we investigated was glycerol since it forms hydrogen bonds with starch and decrease molecular interactions between starch chains. The polymers become more flexible and processable as a result of the free volume increase and the molecular bonds between the chains decreasing, by decreasing the crystallinity.
Thermal, mechanical, and morphological characterizations were used to establish the best blend compositions after stable secondary shaping by injection moulding and film blowing.
Biodegradation analysis has been carried out on the blown films to validate the end-of-life performance of obtained materials.
Кеуwоrds: PBAT, glycerol, starch, TPS, twin-screw extruder (TSE), single-screw extruder (SSE), injection moulding (IM), tensile test, biodegradation, screw speed, plasticization, scanning-electron microscopy (SEM), Young modulus (YM), differential scanning calorimeter (DSC), thermal-gravimetric analysis (TGA), film blowing.
The work consists оf іntrоduсtіоn, 3 сhaрtеrs, соnсlusіоn, bіblіоgraрhу and aрреndіx. Thе work рrеsеntеd оn 56 рagеs, 37 fіgurеs and 21 tablеs. Thе bіblіоgraрhу соntaіns 64 lіtеraturе sources.