A Review on The Effect of Chemical Engineering Design Considerations on The Biodegradability of Polysaccharide-Based Composite Polymers

Being the major environmental pollutants, petroleum-based polymers consist of 99% of plastics produced for industrial and daily-life usage. Bioplastics are increasingly drawing more attention for being a promising solution to environmental issues. Among bioplastics, polysaccharide- incorporated plastics (PSIP) are of special interest for being renewable, sustainable and biodegradable. Polysaccharides are naturally existing polymers and have shown suitable properties if blended with synthetic polymers. In order to be transformed into an applicable plastic, they must go through processes which affects their inherent biodegradability. Research is significantly lacking on how these modifications including blending, grafting, functional group substitution, if and how their original sources, pretreatment, additives and process variables affect the final product biodegradability. This review paper aims to conduct an early attempted investigation into factors that impact PSIP biodegradability in order to help polymer reaction engineers with designing polysaccharide based polymers in terms of biodegradability. Increasing crystallinity, substitution of functional groups, grafting, and crosslinking reduced biodegradability. Plasticizers and compatibilizers improved biodegradability with some exceptions. Also, biodegradation is greatly affected by environmental conditions that was discussed.