The use of starch as a renewable and biodegradable adhesive is becoming increasingly attractive because of the environmental concerns about the industrial wastes generated from petroleum products and the growing awareness of the potential deleterious consequences of greenhouse gas emissions from these activities. Starch adhesive is most extensively used in corrugated board industry because of the abundant supply, low cost, renewability, biodegradability, and ease of chemical modifications. Starch adhesive has great effect on the performance, production technology and manufacturing cost of the corrugated board. It is of great importance to develop starch adhesive with stable properties, high performance, good viscosity, fast curing speed to meet the market requirement. In this paper, oxidation of starch by sodium hypochlorite under aqueous alkaline conditions with the aid of the catalysis of nickel sulphate at room temperature was investigated. The effects of sodium hypochlorite loading and caustic soda dosage on the properties of the starch adhesive were examined. Optimization of starch oxidation is desirable to achieve the highest initial tack and bonding strength. The optimum synthesis condition was obtained. Under the optimum condition, Under the optimum condition, 98.7% of the initial tack and 11.4 N/25 mm of the bonding strength were obtained respectively.. The modified starch adhesive showed great potential for industrial application.
