Monitoring of the degradation dynamics of agricultural films by IR thermography
Introduction
The consumption of plastic materials for application in agriculture has dramatically increased in the last decades posing serious problems of environmental concerns. The confirmation of such an increase is shown in Fig. 1 where the positive trend for each type of plastic product used in agriculture is evident.
On the other hand, the enormous consumption of plastic films, gives rise to plastic waste which is increasing more and more. In Table 1 we report the incidence (%) on the total plastic waste for each item.
Even if the percentage of plastic waste in agriculture seems quite low compared to the other uses, it represents one of the main dangers to the environment due to the difficulties in entering into the recycling chain. In other words, the landfill of million and million tons of plastic films represents a serious problem for the environment also because, while consumption continuously increases, the recycling system in any country doesn't work as it should. Practically most of these films are collected by the farmers and left on the ground borders to be incinerated. The same collection by the farmer is difficult; these films being thinner and damaged, their removal through automatic means is almost impossible.
Biodegradable materials are the ideal solution to this kind of problem which are involving the whole food chain year by year. In this area the effort of the research world, including materials engineers, chemists, physicists, and agronomists, focused on the design and synthesis of new materials with biodegradable properties to be used in agriculture [1], [2], [3], [4], [5].
This research requires new investigation tools in order to evaluate the real biodegradability of new materials, the degradation time together with its dynamics, and the performances when they are applied on soil. In this view, our recent activity aims to look for innovative methods [6]. Here we report the first experimental evidence of a novel method which uses IR thermography to monitor the degradation states of the proposed materials.
Section snippets
Materials and methods
In the last three years, within a European “LIFE-Environment” Project funded by EC and entitled “Biodegradable coverages for sustainable agriculture (BIOCOAGRI)”, we devoted our research activity, together with other partners, to prepare, characterize, study and analyse new type of materials with biodegradable properties useful for agriculture uses (mulch and solarization).
The goal of our Life project was to obtain biodegradable materials in a liquid state in order to spray them on the soil as
Results and discussion
Through an IR thermal camera we monitored the state of the films (shown in Fig. 7) for two weeks and we analysed the thermal images to detect the continuous changing of them [13], [14], studying also the temperature profiles in a selected target area of each material.
In Fig. 8, Fig. 9 we report as an example the images after an elaboration describing the dynamic process of the degradation of a PSS spray and of the alginate-based spray, respectively.
In Fig. 10, it is reported the ratio of the
Acknowledgments
This work has been partially supported by the European Life Project Bio. Co. AGRI contract 03/377.
References (14)
Properties and applications of Mater-Bi starch-based materials
Polym Degrad Stab
(1998)Properties and applications of compostable starch-based plastic material
Polym Degrad Stab
(1998)- et al.
Biodegradable polymers
Prog Polym Sci
(1998) - et al.
Conformational analysis of galactomannans: from oligomeric segments to polymeric chains
Carbohydr Polym
(1998) - et al.
On the galactosyl distribution of commercial galactomannans
Carbohydr Res
(2000) - et al.
Microbiological evaluation of an edible antimicrobial coating on minimally processed carrots
Food Control
(2006) - et al.
Developing biodegradable mulch films from starch-based polymers
Starch
(2001)
Cited by (28)
Effect of viscosity modifiers on soil wicking and physico-mechanical properties of a polyurethane based sprayable biodegradable polymer membrane
2019, Agricultural Water ManagementCitation Excerpt :While there has been much work done on the development of preformed biodegradable plastic mulch films, the use of sprayable ‘plastic mulch coatings’ has received increasing attention globally as a next generation alternative because of its environmental benefits and ease of application (Sartore et al., 2007, 2008; Saif Al-Kalbani et al., 2009; BIO.CO.AGRI EC project, 2005). Polysaccharides have been chosen as the basic ingredients in most of the newly developed water-borne formulations as they are biodegradable, biocompatible, non-toxic, low cost and available from renewable resources (Avella et al. (2007) and Mormile et al., 2007). However, the issue with polysaccharide-based formulations is their high hydrophilicity and poor mechanical properties.
Combined application of photo-selective mulching films and beneficial microbes affects crop yield and irrigation water productivity in intensive farming systems
2017, Agricultural Water ManagementCitation Excerpt :The datalogger was connected to a GPRS-modem to regularly send the data to a static IP-address where all monitored environmental and system variables could be displayed. In order to analyse, in real time, the thermal states of each plot during the different trials, we used Infrared (IR) Thermography (Mormile et al., 2007; Stinca et al., 2015). We acquired IR images with a microbolometer digital thermal camera Avio TVS 500 (sensor FPA 320 × 240, spectral band 8–14 μm and temperature sensitivity of 0.06 K) on five sunny days during each cropping cycle.
Preformed and sprayable polymeric mulch film to improve agricultural water use efficiency
2016, Agricultural Water ManagementCitation Excerpt :In regard to the mulch films, spraying a continuous protective coating on the soil (rather than laying a preformed film) of biopolymer based formulations represents an innovative approach (Sartoretto and Sampathkumar, 1984; Degreve et al., 2006; Tzika et al., 2003). Polysaccharides have been used in most of the newly developed water-born formulations as they are biodegradable, biocompatible, non-toxic, low cost and available from renewable resources (Avella et al., 2007; Mormile et al., 2007). However, even though the physicochemical phenomena that control their water resistance and mechanical properties (i.e. macromolecular reorganizations, retrogradation and gel-formation processes, pH change and cross-linking processes) have been studied, their limitation of low water resistance and poor mechanical properties still remains.
Solid-phase photocatalytic degradation of polyethylene film with manganese oxide OMS-2
2011, Solid State SciencesCitation Excerpt :All of the film waste left in the soil seriously damages soil structure, affects agricultural practices and operation and delays crop growth and fruiting. Biodegradable plastics are regarded as an ideal solution to this problem [2,3], however their chemical instability and high price have still hindered their large-scale application by today [1,4,5]. Development of efficient and economical technologies for degradation of PE becomes urgent for modern agriculture in China, in which will keep PE technology using in agriculture, nursery a good environment, and benefits planters as well.
Solid-phase photocatalytic degradation of polyethylene-goethite composite film under UV-light irradiation
2009, Journal of Hazardous Materials