Mophorlogical and Thermal Studies of Isolated Sammaz-14 Maize Cobs Nano Fibre

Abstract

The growing concerns about global warming and depleting petroleum reserves have made scientists/researchers focus more on the use of natural fibres such as Maize cob, bagasse, coir, sisal among others. About 180 kg of cobs are obtained from each ton of maize shelled which has little utilization or no utilization. This study utilizes maize cob from SAMMAZ-14 maize variety for the extraction of nano cellulose using Chemico-mechanical method. Alkaline hydrolysis was performed with 5% NaOH for 4hrs with MLR of 1:10. Ball milling was done for 5 hrs with BMR of 30:1. The extracted nanocellulose were characterized by thermal characterization (TG and DTG), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), Energy Disperse X-ray (EDX) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), which confirmed the extracted Maize cob nano fibres (MC-NF) were in nano scale ranging from 1-100 and 1-200nm in diameter and length respectively. Thermal analysis showed MC-NF has more thermal stability than untreated maize cob (MC-UT) whose degradation was initiated at lower temperature with higher charred formation. Morphological studies showed MC-NF has spindle like structures while the untreated maize cob (MC-UT) is plain due to high amorphous portion on the cellulosic structure.