Effect of additional crosslinker (tapioca flour) on the characteristics of bacterial cellulose-seaweed extract composites Available to Purchase

Bacterial cellulose is widely used in various fields, one of which is in biomedical fields such as separation membranes, artificial wound dressings, and cartilage tissue engineering substrates. Bacterial cellulose has low mechanical properties, so a composite of bacterial cellulose with seaweed extract (BC-Se) was formulated to obtain a new, better material. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of variation crosslinker (tapioca flour) on the mechanical, structural and physical properties of BC-SeC. Bacterial cellulose is made from a mixture of coconut water, urea and sugar, which is then fermented with Acetobacter xylinum for 15 days. The bacterial cellulose made from seaweed extract is called the bacterial compound cellulose-seaweed extract (BC-SeC). The BC-SeC will feature testing for tensile strength, compressive strength, water content and structural analysis using FTIR. The best tensile strength test result was BC-SeC with 2% crosslinker added with a value of 50.10 MPa. The addition of Crosslinker can reduce the percentage of BC-SeC water content, while the FTIR spectrum results show that the functional groups contained in cellulose only experience a shift.