Utilization of Waste Chicken feathers as a Sustainable Resource for the Production of Bioplastic film with Keratin and Polyvinyl alcohol

Abstract

Anurag Singh and Shyam D Maurya

Chicken being used as one of the major sources of food in tropical countries generates a huge amount of wastes in the form of feather which is generally discarded in the soil and water creating an enormous environmental pollution. Chicken feather are extensively found as waste material which takes a lot of time to degrade. This waste material can be extensively utilized for the extraction of a biopolymer from it. A sequence of chemical processes involving chemical method (alkaline hydrolysis) can be effectively used to extract Keratin from waste chicken feather. At present work is aimed to the obtained keratin is dispersed in varied proportions with Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) to produce biodegradable film by solvent casting method. The mechanical properties of film improved upto 5 wt% of keratin loading without compromising the properties. The water absorption percentage was found to have decreased drastically with the increment of Keratin in PVA. The morphological characteristics of the blend film were investigated by SEM. The presence of single peak via DSC implies that the blended film has good miscibility and the enhancement in thermal stability was extensively observed by TGA. The Keratin/PVA blended film shows good degradation when the concentration of keratin increases. The study provides the application of Keratin extracted from waste chicken feather which is most common waste. Hence their production in biodegradable film from waste can be efficiently used to reduce the environmental waste accumulation with the added advantage of biodegradable application.

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