Material property characterization of co-products from biofuel industries: Potential uses in value-added biocomposites

This paper gives an insight of biofuel production and the status -into the co-products obtained from this industry. Furthermore this work explores the possibility of these co-products as raw materials for value-added uses in material applications. This is achieved by understanding composition, solid density, and moisture content of prominent co-products such as soy meal, DDGS (distillers’ dried grains with solubles) and jatropha meal. Moisture content and density measurements showed no trend. Soy meal has the highest protein content, followed by jatropha and DDGS. Thermal stability of these co-products was analyzed by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), which revealed that the thermal stabilities are ranked as soy meal>DDGS>jatropha meal. FT-IR spectroscopy was used to understand the functional groups in these meals and it showed that the amide group was prominent in all of these meals. In pursuit of finding value-added uses for these co-products of biofuel industries, biodegradable polymer, i.e. polycaprolactone (PCL), based biocomposites were prepared by melt processing technique using extrusion followed by injection molding. Tensile, flexural and impact properties were evaluated. Also, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of fractured sections of the biocomposites was examined.