The environment has been significantly impacted by the extraction of natural resources and generation of agro-industrial waste. Therefore, the handling and transformation of waste have a high potential to replace petroleum-based packaging with biopackaging. Hemicellulose is an agro-industrial waste that is capable of forming a film/bioplastic with hydrophilic characteristics owing to the hydroxyl groups present in the molecule. Thus, the present study aimed to evaluate the effects of xylan acetylation on film formation by manipulating the main process variables such as catalyst concentration and reaction time. Consequently, the effects of acetylation were evaluated on the generated film (hydrophobicity and mechanical strength) and compared to films of natural xylan, starch, and starch structured with natural xylan. The films formed with acetylated xylan showed high moisture resistance, with an 80.70

Facing increasing social, environmental, and economic pressure to substitute non-renewable fossil resources with renewable ones, hemicellulose has received attention as a substrate for the production of high-value products such as packaging materials because of its non-toxicity, abundance, and biodegradability. Hemicelluloses in the cell wall are naturally substituted with acetyl groups, and the degree and pattern of acetylation vary among plant species, tissue and cell types, and plant maturity. Hemicellulose acetylation influences features such as the flexural properties of wood, polysaccharide interactions, plant growth, and stress resistance. However, hemicellulose is deacetylated during its separation from other biomass polymers, mainly via alkaline solubilization. Therefore, when industrial applications require a certain degree of acetylation, chemical acetylation is necessary, which occurs through an esterification reaction that links acetyl groups to hemicellulose, catalyzed or not. Acetylation may enhance some features of hemicellulose-based packaging materials, such as mechanical strength, processability, thermal stability, hydrophobicity, and oxygen and water vapor permeability. This review provides an update on the latest advances in plant polysaccharide acetylation, including the acetylation mechanism in the plant cell wall as well as the influence of such esterification on plant properties and wood industrial application. Recent developments and progress in hemicellulose chemical acetylation strategies have been summarized, disclosing the advantages and disadvantages of different solvents and catalysts applied and acetylation evaluation methods.

Renewable materials of biological origin exhibit attractive properties in relation to traditional plastics, as they can be partially or completely replaced, thereby reducing environmental impacts. Hemicelluloses are a group of polysaccharides that have expanded applications when acetylated. Acetylation can improve the mechanical strength and water vapor barrier properties of xylan-based bioplastics. By partially acetylating xylan in the present study, it was possible to use water as a solvent for the film-forming solution and starch as a second polysaccharide in the formation of bioplastics. Xylan was modified via partial chemical acetylation by varying the reaction time, solvent, and catalyst content. The bioplastics were formed by non-acetylated xylan and acetylated xylan with degrees of substitution (DS) of 0.45 and 0.9, respectively, with starch to form blends using glycerol as a plasticizer. Acetylation with DS 0.45 showed better results in increasing the hydrophilicity of the bioplastic. On the other hand, acetylation influenced the thermal stability of bioplastics, increasing the maximum temperature of the degradation rate from 302 °C to 329 °C and 315 °C, owing to changes in the crystallinity of the polymers. In addition to the modulus of elasticity 2.99 to 290.61 and 274.67 MPa for the non-acetylated bioplastic and the bioplastic with DS of 0.45 and 0.90, respectively. Thus, the films obtained presented suitable physicochemical properties for use in various industrial applications, such as active and intelligent packaging in the food sector.

Plastic has become a common material in society’s daily life, since it meets industrial needs, due to its ability to be shaped in several ways, providing a relatively light, resistant, and inert product to be processed and manufactured on a large scale and at low costs. However, its environmental consequences over the years have caused several countries to deal with large amounts of residues, which accumulate for centuries without decomposing, thus affecting life in different biomes. An alternative towards the implementation of an efficient collection and recycling system would be its replacement (even if partially) with materials capable of degrading into small elements common to the environment. Hemicellulose, for example, is a polysaccharide highly available in the cell wall of plants, with potential application in the manufacture of biodegradable bioplastics that can replace conventional plastics; however, hemicellulose-based films are hydrophilic and have low mechanical resistance. There are challenges to improve the characteristics and fabrication processes of biodegradable films, which in addition to meeting market demands, must be viable. A great motivation is the strong market for functional materials such as packaging to promote better quality to the food. In addition, consumers are more demanding and concerned with the consumption of environmentally friendly products.

Bioethanol can be produced from lignocellulosic material, however, due to the material recalcitrance, a pretreatment step is needed to improve cellulose accessibility. Dilute acid pretreatment improves the cellulose digestibility but it generates sugar and lignin degradation products. The sugarcane leaf was subjected to different operating conditions such as reaction time (10–60 min), temperature (120–80 °C), and sulfuric acid concentration (2–20%, m/m equivalent to 0.2–1.8 m/v) to evaluate the released sugars, degradation products, and pseudo-lignin formation. The conditions that resulted in higher pseudo-lignin formation were the most severe, 25.46% of pseudo-lignin. The sample with the highest pseudo-lignin formation was among those with the lowest glucose yield after the enzymatic hydrolysis, indicating that there was a pseudo-lignin inhibition. The best pretreatment conditions to maximize the enzymatic hydrolysis was 60 min of reaction at 180 °C and 2% of sulfuric acid, resulting in 94.56% of cellulose conversion into glucose.

Hemicellulose is a highly hydrophilic homo or heteropolysaccharide with a branched structure. This polysaccharide exhibits great potential as a feedstock material, and a derivatization results in the formation of better feedstock material. Hemicellulose can be used as a bio-polymeric material as it is biodegradable. It also exhibits the advantage of being renewable and it is available in residues/waste. The backbone of the hemicelluloses and the side chains contain a large number of hydroxyl groups. Esterification, etherification, graft copolymerization, and other reactions can be conducted to chemically modify these hydroxyl groups. The chemical modifications help tune various properties such as hydrophobicity, thermal stability, and solubility (in different solvents). The free hydroxyl groups present in the macromolecules can be chemically modified to other functional groups to address the drawbacks. The modified compounds can find applications in various fields and their novel properties can be exploited.

The accumulation of plastic wastes in different environments has become a topic of major concern over the past decades; therefore, technologies and strategies aimed at mitigating the environmental impacts of petroleum products have gained worldwide relevance. In this scenario, the production of bioplastics mainly from polysaccharides such as starch is a growing strategy and a field of intense research. The use of plasticizers, the preparation of blends, and the reinforcement of bioplastics with lignocellulosic components have shown promising and environmentally safe alternatives for overcoming the limitations of bioplastics, mainly due to the availability, biodegradability, and biocompatibility of such resources. This review addresses the production of bioplastics composed of polysaccharides from plant biomass and its advantages and disadvantages.