Marjan shahmir - Department of polymer Engineering, Amir Kabir university of Technology P.O.Box ۱۵۸۷۵-۴۴۱۳, Tehran, Iran
Homa asempour - Department of polymer Engineering, Amir Kabir university of Technology

Polyethylene (PE) in various types is currently one of the most commercial polymer used for packaging because of many advantages. The polymer films, Bags, bottles, cups, blister packages, etc… provide stable, relatively unbroken, chemically resistance, light weight packages. However, it is well known that PE, due to its inherent inert nature and high molecular weight (>100000) does not degrade easily by natural surrounding, hence it causes serious environmental problems with disposal of one-trip packaging. The magnitude of the discarded PE packages have led us to find new methods of making this polymer biodegradable. The most common approaches include introducing keton carbonyl groups into the polymer chain or mix it with suitable additives (sensitizers) which absorb the ultraviolet of sun-rays and generate reactive chemical intermediates which facilitate disintegration and photo-oxidation of the polymer. The fundamental processes which occurs in the photo-oxidation of polyethylene have been extensively studied. It is reported that when the molecular weight of the polymer is reached to ~5000, the oxidative fragments become biodegradable . Number of aromatic ketones, organo soluble transition metal compounds and complexes are the normally additives used for initiation or sensitization of photo-oxidation of PE .In our previous paper we reported that LLDPE film which contains small amount (0.2wt %) of galbanic acid (GA) a lacton compound with the following chemical formula,