Equilibrium moisture content of some bioplastic materials for agricultural use (drip tubes)

This work focused on the determination of equilibrium moisture content (EMC) of some bioplastic materials that could be used for agricultural foil mulch as a source to produce biodegradable drip tubes. Equilibrium moisture content (EMC) is very important to determine the desirable conditions of microorganism’s growth, which causes material deterioration and degradation. Thus, this work aimed to determine the EMC of some commercial bioplastic mulch such as (Bioflex, Ecoflex, Chitosan, Mater-bi, and Bi-OPL). The bioplastic materials were put under different temperature (10-50°C) and relative humidity (43-95%) conditions. The data revealed that changing the relative humidity from 43 to 95% has a great effect on both of Mater-Bi and Chitosan, which the EMC increased by 9.87 and 12.22%, respectively. On the other hand, there is a small effect on the EMC with relative humidity changes on each of Ecoflex (1.41%), Bioflex (2.4%) and Bi-OPL (0.5%).