Novel bio-based and biodegradable polymer blends

Abstract

v CHAPTER 1: GENERAL INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Organization 1 1.2 Motivation and objectives 1 1.3 Background and literature review 2 1.3.1 Polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) 2 1.3.2 Polyamide (PA) 5 1.3.3 Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) 6 1.3.4 Soy protein 7 1.4 Reference 9 CHAPTER 2: PROCESSING AND CHARACTERIZATION OF BIO-BASED POLYHYDROXYALKANOTE [PHA] /POLYAMIDE [PA] BLENDS 13 2.1 Abstract 13 2.2 Introduction 14 2.3 Experimental section 16 2.3.1 Materials 16 2.3.2 Micro-compounding and Compression Molding 16 2.3.3 Measurements 17 2.4 Results and discussion 19 2.5 Conclusions 34 2.6 Acknowledgements 35 2.7 References 35 CHAPTER 3: CHARACTERIZATION AND BIODEGRADATION BEHAVIOR OF BIO-BASED POLY(LACTIC ACID) [PLA] AND SOY PROTEIN BLENDS 40 3.1 Abstract 40 3.2 Introduction 41