Effect of fish gelatin as a structure forming agent to enhance transparency and speed up degradability of bionanocomposite semi-refined kappa carrageenan film reinforced with ZnO and SiO2 filler

Biodegradable films have been developed as a potential replacement for plastic in food packaging. Apart from reducing environmental pollution, biodegradable films can be used to prevent quality degradation and extend the storage life of food products. Hybrid kappa carrageenan biopolymers have been developed by introducing SiO2 and ZnO nanoparticles to enhance film characteristics with good packaging quality. However, the composite possessed low transparency and high solubility. Therefore, this study aimed to introduce fish gelatin (FG) into a semi-refined kappa-carrageenan (SRkC) composite to improve the transparency and decrease the solubility properties. The films were prepared at various concentrations of blended polymers of SRkC and FG at different ratios (1:3, 1:1, 3:1) and SiO2-ZnO nanoparticles as fillers. The results concluded that as the increase of FG concentrations, the solubility properties of films are likely to decrease. Among the blended films, the films with a ratio of SRkC:FG (1:1) revealed the highest transparency with high UV screening. It also produced films prone to be degraded by the environment. Thus, this knowledge of the bionanocomposite film properties could provide useful contributions to food packaging applications.