Physicochemical properties of film fabricated from cotton gin trash

Cotton gin trash (CGT), an agro-industrial waste material produced during the ginning operation of cotton fibre, is a sustainable source of material to fabricate biodegradable polymer. Earlier research conducted on the preparation of polymer from different fractions of cotton trash such as linters, burrs and seed hulls cannot be pursued, as physical separation of these individual parts is quite difficult and impractical; the linters entangling all fractions. In our current study, we have used the whole cotton gin trash to fabricate films using formic acid (FA) with different CGT/FA weight ratios (0.5/99.5, 1/99, 3/97, 5/95 and 7/93) in a one-step process. Further, we investigated the structural changes, crystallinity, thermal property, tensile characteristics, wettability and biodegradability of the CGT films. The crystallinity of the films increased with increasing proportion of formic acid. The films were thermally stable up to 200 °C without any glass transition point. The tensile strength of the films was comparable to commercial low density polyethylene. The films produced in this study were found to be biodegradable. Therefore, the overall results have well exposed the CGT as a potential sustainable source for material production.