Preliminary Studies on Converting Agricultural Waste into Biodegradable Plastics, Part I: Corn Distillers’ Dry Grain

Distillers’ dry grain (DDG) was derivatized either by carboxymethylation, glutaration, maleiation, phthallation, or succination in order to produce anionic materials suitable for complexation with soy protein isolate. Infrared spectroscopy confirmed that derivatization of DDG by all reagents was successful. Blending of derivatized anionic products with soy protein resulted in instant precipitation of gels. The gels were centrifuged, molded, and dried into solid pellets with tensile strengths as high as 1.67MPa, suggesting that these materials could be promising as biodegradable structural materials. Infrared spectroscopy suggested the possibility of complexes forming between soy protein isolate and each of the derivatized DDG samples.