Estudio de la dosificación del almidón extraído del banano en un polímero de tipo termoplástico

In this research both the extraction of starch from banana residues and the dosage in a thermostable polymer matrix (policaprolactone (PCL)) was evaluated with the purpose of determining the appropriate formulation. The extracted starch was modified by acetylation and subsequently compared with the unmodified starch by infrared spectroscopy (IR). The modified starch showed a small decrease in the bands width between 3000 and 3700 cm^-1 corresponding to the vibrations by stretching and bending of the hydroxyl groups, due to the introduction of C-O groups, which means that acetylation was successful. The two types of starches were dosed in 10% with polycaprolactone and analyzed through differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) analyzing the most important thermal parameters. The dosage with modified starch presented higher values: for the glass transition temperature it presented a value of 33 °C and for the fusion temperature 66 °C. However, the biopolymer with the highest degree of crosslinking was the unmodified starch formulation with a value of 12%, so it turned out to be the best formulation.