CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TRANSACTIONS VOL. 80, 2020 A publication of The Italian Association of Chemical Engineering Online at www.cetjournal.it Guest Editors: Eliseo Maria Ranzi, Rubens Maciel Filho Copyright © 2020, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l. I SBN 978-88-95608-78-5; I SSN 2283-9216 Characterize of Composite Scaffold Using Gelatin- Carboxymethylcellulose from Waste Product for Wound Dressing by Salt Leaching Method Fasai Wiwatwongwana*, Seksan Chaijit Department of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, Faculty of Engineering, Pathumwan Institute of Technology, 833 Rama 1 Road, Wangmai, Pathumwan, Bangkok 10330, Thailand fasaiw227@gmail.com The wound dressing can be used for burn patient or people who loss of skin. Blending gelatin with carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) can be used to produce skin graft for wound dressing application. Gelatin and CMC are waste from livestock production industry and agricultural waste, respectively. This study was emphasized on mechanical properties of composite material. Gelatin which was a biocompatibility material and CMC which was a scaffold strengthening and could improve in elasticity were selected for scaffold fabrication via salt leaching method. The blended scaffold was fabricated in various gelatin/CMC ratios which were 3/0, 2.7/0.3, 2.4/0.6, 2.1/0.9 and 1.8/1.2, respectively. The mechanical characterization of the scaffold was evaluated by compressive test using universal testing machine (UTM). The data obtained from the UTM was used to determine compressive modulus. The results showed the highest value of compressive modulus was obtained from gelatin/CMC at ratio of 1.8/1.2 with 15.16 ± 3.23 kPa. On the other hand, the compressive modulus from pure gelatin showed the lowest value which was 0.93 ± 0.26 kPa. Finite element models could predict the scaffold deformation with 1.8/1.2 scaffold showed the highest range of strain energy which could support loading more than other scaffolds. Therefore, the mechanical strength of 1.8/1.2 scaffold could be applied for wound dressing application. Moreover, this research needed to produce material from waste and added valuable for wound care applications. 1. Introduction The development of biological skin substitutes in tissue engineering is fast growing up nowadays. It have to restore, maintain and improve biologically active molecules into tissue function when the disruption of the normal anatomic structure and function of the skin occurred. Normally, the skin wound or chronic wound can be caused by pressure ulcers, diabetic foot ulcers and venous leg ulcers, burns and diseases. The wound dressing or scaffold have to promote healing process which involves several phases including proliferation, maturation and tissue remodeling. It should be a biocompatible and biodegradable materials to prevent infection and inflammation and provide mechanical support for tissue regeneration (Ma 2006 and Talikowska et al. 2019). The scaffold conditions have to be designed for the recovery mechanism which depends on tissue engineering applications (Park 2002 and Hollinger 2012). To overcome the high price of wound dressing components, this research aims to fabricate the scaffold in lower price with suitable skin functions. There have various naturally derived polymeric materials such as collagen, gelatin, chitosan, fibrin, hyaluronic acid or synthetic polymers such as polycaprolactone (PCL), poly(glycolic acid) (PGA) and their copolymers and poly(lactic acid) (PLA) have been used to fabricate tissue scaffolds (Modaress et al. 2015 and Rad et al. 2019 and Romero et al. 2018 and Ferrari et al 2017). In addition, the mechanical strength and elastic properties are important functions of scaffolds. It have to support the different mechanical loading during implantation and tissue growth. It also should have appropriate pore size with high porosity, large surface area to volume ratio and interconnected porous structure. Finite element models can analyze the homogeneous deformations behavior of biological tissues such as hart wall, tendons, ligaments, articular cartilage and connective tissue or skin (Benítez 2017 and Groves et al. 2013). There have previous study of graphene oxide DOI: 10.3303/CET2080055 Paper Received: 4 November 2019; Revised: 13 February 2020; Accepted: 7 April 2020 Please cite this article as: Wiwatwongwana F., Chaijit S., 2020, Characterize of Composite Scaffold Using Gelatin-carboxymethylcellulose from Waste Product for Wound Dressing by Salt Leaching Method, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 80, 325-330 DOI:10.3303/CET2080055 325