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Reduced tensile properties of bacterial cellulose membranes after an accelerated composite temperature/humidity cyclic assay

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Abstract

Bacterial cellulose (BC) membranes are an excellent ecopolymer product that has been proposed for many applications, including acoustic, biomedical, and fabrics. However, those uses require the membranes’ exposure to environmental conditions related to shelf storage, washing, or excess of humidity that are not usually evaluated when developing new materials. In this work, we investigated the effect of high and low temperature, and high humidity accelerated exposure on the physical and mechanical properties of BC membranes prepared from Kombucha fermentation. We prepared BC membranes following standard protocols and subjected them to a composite temperature/humidity accelerated cyclic assay. The mechanical and physical properties of the membranes were measured before and after the assay. We found that the ultimate tensile strength, elastic modulus, and elongation at break significantly changed after the assay. We also observed a few morphology changes, but no changes in the DSC and IR determinations. Our results suggest that environmental tests should be performed in every biodegradable polymer according to their intended use to determine their applications fully.

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Data availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article. All datasets generated are available from corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

Joan Manuel Molina-Romero thanks the Mexican National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) and the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) for the scholarships received.

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tecnologico de Monterrey, Escuela de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Eduardo Monroy Cárdenas 2000, San Antonio Buenavista, 50110, Toluca de Lerdo, Estado de México, Mexico

    Joan Manuel Molina-Romero & Horacio Vieyra

  2. Tecnologico de Monterrey, Escuela de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Carretera Lago de Guadalupe 3.5, Colonia Margarita Maza de Juárez, 52926, Atizapán de Zaragoza, Estado de México, Mexico

    Bárbara Estefanía Arteaga-Ballesteros & Andrea Guevara-Morales

  3. Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Centro de Investigación en Ciencia Aplicada y Tecnología Avanzada, Legaria 694, Colonia Irrigación C.P. 11500, Ciudad de, Mexico

    Eduardo San Martín-Martínez

Authors
  1. Joan Manuel Molina-Romero
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  2. Bárbara Estefanía Arteaga-Ballesteros
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  3. Andrea Guevara-Morales
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  4. Eduardo San Martín-Martínez
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  5. Horacio Vieyra
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Contributions

Horacio Vieyra: Conceptualization, Methodology, Resources, Writing- Original draft preparation. Joan Manuel Molina-Romero: Investigation, Visualization. Bárbara Estefanía Arteaga-Ballesteros: Investigation, Visualization. Andrea Guevara-Morales: Supervision, Writing – reviewing and editing. Eduardo San Martín-Martínez: Resources, Writing – reviewing and editing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Horacio Vieyra.

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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Molina-Romero, J.M., Arteaga-Ballesteros, B.E., Guevara-Morales, A. et al. Reduced tensile properties of bacterial cellulose membranes after an accelerated composite temperature/humidity cyclic assay. J Polym Environ 29, 2349–2358 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10924-020-02023-z

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