Abstract:
Presently, there is an increase interest in the development of bio-plastics products from agricultural material which biodegradable in order to reduce the problem of waste disposal. Since the amount of the modern carbon in bio-plastics can indicate how much the amount of agricultural materials contain in the bio-plastics product. Thus, this research aims to determine the modern carbon in bio-plastic using the carbon dioxide absorption method. The radioactivity of carbon-14 contained in the sample is measured by liquid scintillation counter. The percentage of bio-based content in the sample was determined by comparing the observed modern carbon content with the value contain in agricultural raw materials such as Tapioca starch and sugar. This research randomly selected various types of bio-plastics from the market, for example, Polylactic acid, Polybutylene succinated, and Thermoplastics, to find the quantity of modern carbon. The results from the experiments show that only Polylactic acid samples have the modern carbon content close to the agricultural materials while the other bio-plastics types are found to have the quantity of the modern carbon content less than 50%. In other words, almost of these bio-plastics samples were mixed with other material which is not the agricultural material. The error of the analysis is 8.8%, It was confirmed by plant-based that identified on product labels. Therefore, this study can specify the ratio of the raw material, especially agricultural material in the bio-plastics production. Moreover, the methodology of this study is beneficial in inspection aspect and improve the bio-plastic manufacturing industry in the future.