Lignocellulosic biomass for the preparation of cellulose‐based hydrogel and its use for optimizing water resources in agriculture

Abstract

Recently, efforts have been devoted to find ways in utilizing biomass as feedstocks for the production of organic chemicals. This is because of its abundance, renewability and worldwide distribution. Lignocellulosic agricultural waste materials are regarded as abundant, inexpensive, and readily available natural resources for both chemical and paper industries. Hydrogels are polymeric materials that vary in their origin and composition and can absorb large amount of water without dissolving. In our study, cellulose-based acrylic acid hydrogel was synthesized starting from rice straw as a source for the lignocellulosic material, where cellulose was first isolated after alkaline-acid pulping treatment followed by bleaching step with sodium hypochlorite resulting of 90.8% holocellulose. The cellulose-based acrylic acid hydrogel was synthesized applying heterogeneous reaction and shows a swelling ratio more than 3000%. The resulting hydrogel was further characterized with FT-IR and SEM. On the other hand, comparison between the rice straw-based hydrogel and the commercially available acrylamide hydrogel was studied for improving maize production in salt affected soil as well as in the growth promoters of maize under water stress. The experimental results demonstrated that the yield parameters were increased with increasing irrigation rates. Both types of hydrogels introduce positive and significant effect compared to the one without adding hydrogels. Also, acrylamide hydrogel was effective for improving almost yield parameters more than applying rice straw-based hydrogel. Generally, the addition of hydrogel increases the nutrient concentration, uptake, and both of water and nutrients use efficiency.

Rheokinetics of graft copolymerization of acrylamide in concentrated starch and rheological behaviors and microstructures of reaction products

“…However, traditionally synthesized polymers are not biodegradable, which restricts their industrial application in agriculture. Therefore, natural polysaccharides such as cellulose (Ibrahim, Abd-Eladl, & Abou-Baker, 2015;Zhang et al, 2017a), lignocellulose (El-Saied, Waly, & Basta, 2000;El-Saied, Waley, Basta, & El-Hadi, 2004;El-Saied, Basta, El-Hadi, & Waley, 2007), starch Singh, Sharma, Negi, & Dhiman, 2015), and chitosan (Kashyap, Xiang, & Heiden, 2015;Perez & Francois, 2016) have been studied for the synthesis of hydrogels, due to their abundance, biodegradability, renewability, and low cost. Starch is one of the first and most promising materials used to produce hydrogels due to its chemical versatility and relatively easier processability among polysaccharides (Ismail, Irani, & Ahmad, 2013;Zhang & Xu, 2017).…”

Environmentally F riendly S oil W ater C onservation T echniques

“…Agriculture residuals is a sustainable source of the most natural renewable resource in the earth which is the cellulose [13], that also showed a great results in soil water retention improvement with optimum percentage of 2% w/w for the B-Cellulose and the α-Cellulose, but they are not as good as the raw straws because they were extracted through chemical reactions that produce harmful by-products.…”

“…During the past few years, scientists have tried to focus on finding environmentally friendly solutions while achieving high efficiency, they were resorted to the use of agricultural residues by conducting some chemical reactions on them to be introduced into different efficient organic products [12], [13], such as cellulose-based hydrogel. Initially, superabsorbent cellulose based hydrogel was considered as totally biodegradable which has the ability to swill and hold water in soil [14], [15].…”

“…Initially, superabsorbent cellulose based hydrogel was considered as totally biodegradable which has the ability to swill and hold water in soil [14], [15]. The cellulose-based hydrogel is synthesized beginning from the extraction of cellulose from biomass (lignocellulose material) and then fulfilment the polymerization process with a cross-binding agent such as N-N Methylenebisacrylamide (MBA) [13]. Hydrogels in the polymerized form can be non-toxic, pHneutral, and environmentally friendly materials, but after a certain period of time (five years substantially) depolymerization take place to all hydrogels naturally, and this is in contrast to the public's belief that hydrogels are fixed forever, however the hydrogels release acrylamide when they break down which is lethal neurotoxin that can be inhaled as dust, enters the body through the skin and they have been shown to causes cancer.…”

Preparation of Environment Friendly Cellulose Derivatives and Paper From Rice Straw

“…Methylcellulose was treated with neutralized acrylic acid in the presence of potassium persulfate as initiator and N,N -methylene bisacrylamide as crosslinker under N2 atmosphere , the product was washed with aqueous methanol and dried under vaccum , then the product tested for water absorption ( Ibrahim et al , 2015 ) . The same previous steps was applied with carboxymethylcellulose.…”