Nanolignocellulose Extracted from Environmentally Undesired Prosopis juliflora

Abstract

Rising sustainability demands the search of new low-market-value sources of lignocellulosic biomass as raw material for nanocellulose processing. In this paper, we accordingly propose the isolation of nanocellulose from Prosopis juliflora, an abundant but environmentally undesired tree. P. juliflora wood was powered, refined by steam explosion and bleaching, and subsequently used to isolate cellulose nanocrystals and nanofibers by means of acid hydrolysis and mechanical fibrillation. The derived nanocrystals had a rod-shaped structure with an average diameter of 20 nm and length of 150 nm, whereas the nanofibers had a diameter of 10 nm and length in micron size. Moreover, we report a simple method to isolate nanolignocellulose by using partially bleached P. juliflora as feedstock. The presence of lignin provided antioxidant and antimicrobial activity to nanocellulose, as well as hydrophobicity and increased thermal stability. The study demonstrates the successful use of P. juliflora to extract functional nanomaterials, which compensate for its environmental concern and declining market interest.

Plasma surface-modification of cellulose nanocrystals: a green alternative towards mechanical reinforcement of ABS

“…Overall, the characteristic bands of saccharides, including the peaks at 2893 and 1400 cm À1 corresponding to the C-H stretching bands and bending of -CH 2 groups, remain unchanged. 2,21 No signicant change in the OH signal at 3300 cm À1 was observed, as the modication only affected the surface hydroxyl groups, while the internal groups of cellulose remained untouched. 22 However, all modied nanocrystals, showed the appearance of a small peak in the range of 1700 cm À1 (highlighted in Fig.…”

“…31 Nevertheless, the ABS/CNC nanocomposites exhibited a small degradation step at lower temperatures as well, corresponding to the contribution of cellulose nanocrystals, which degrade at lower temperatures (z250 C). 2 The inuence of the cellulose nanocrystals over the mechanical properties of ABS nanocomposites was studied, and the results are shown in Fig. 8 and Table 2.…”

“…This enormous increase in mechanical performance could be attributed in part to the reinforcement of CNC's, which are known to possess outstanding mechanical properties. 2 However, it is also known that the impact resistance in ABS is strongly dependent on the proportions of polybutadiene in relation to styrene-acrylonitrile (SAN). 28 In our system, the incorporation of nanocrystals in the ABS had an inuence in the molecular weight of the SAN phase, resulting in an increasing of the elastomeric phase (reected in the gel-% values in Table 2), which is suggested to happen due to a possible interaction from the surface of the nanocrystals with the free radicals generated from the peroxide initiator employed for the synthesis of ABS.…”

“…Nanocellulose, isolated through a top-down approach from different biomass sources is a prime alternative in terms of sustainability due to its low cost and abundant sources (coming from the most abundant organic polymer on earth, cellulose), as well as advantageous mechanical properties, low density, non-toxicity, versatility for surface modication and the possibility to generate energy without residue aer burning at the end of their life cycle. 1,2 Nevertheless, for certain applications such as mechanical reinforcement of polymeric materials, nanocellulose has some drawbacks such as a limited compatibility with non-polar matrixes, resulting in detrimental mechanical properties. 1,3 To overcome these challenges, several strategies for the surface modication of cellulose nanocrystals have been proposed during the last decade, among them for instance polymer graing through controlled/living radical polymerization techniques have been the most extensively studied including ATRP (atom transfer reversible additionfragmentation chain transfer) [4][5][6][7] and RAFT (reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer) 5 polymerizations.…”

Mechanically Robust Antibacterial Nanopapers Through Mixed Dimensional Assembly for Anionic Dye Removal

“…Among the numerous biopolymers, isolated cellulose stands foremost due to its excellent chemical, physical and biodegradable properties [11]. Cellulose are bio polymers mostly isolated from wood [12,13]. Other sources include algae, bacteria and tunicate, the only animal resource [14].…”