A comparative study of pine rosin and glutaraldehyde cross linker on mechanical properties of jute corn starch based biocomposite

Biocompositesmade up of starch and jute fibres are biodegradable and environmentally friendly materials for sustainable development. In this study, corn starch has been separately modified with 15% pine rosin and 40% glutaraldehyde, and 30% glycerol is used as a plasticizer. The composites have been prepared for three different volume proportions of matrix and jute fibre such as 60:40, 70:30 and 80:20 by using a hot compression moulding machine. The effects of pine rosin and glutaraldehyde on mechanical properties have been studied. Pine rosin modified starch jute composites have shown higher tensile and flexural properties as compared with glutaraldehyde modified starch jute composite. The highest tensile strength and modulus are found at 60:40 matrix and jute fibre volume proportion of pine rosin modified starch jute composite which are 13.97 MPa and 782.94 MPa respectively. Similar trends were found in flexural strength and modulus for pine rosin modified starch jute composite having matrix to jute fibre proportion 60:40 which are 29.18 MPa and 1107.76 MPa respectively. But, in case of impact strength, glutaraldehyde modified starch jute composite having matrix to jute fibre proportion 80:20 have shown highest impact strength that is 59.05 KJ/m2. Starch-jute composite with glutaraldehyde shows 33% more water absorbency as compared to composite having pine rosin as cross linker. Highest FTIR graph indicates that the number of -OH group is much lower in case of pine rosin modified starch than glutatraldehyde modified starch which indicates that bonds formed by pine rosin are much stronger than the bonds formed by glutaraldehyde. The surface morphology of the composite was influenced by pine rosin and glutaraldehyde which is shown in the SEM image.