The reuse of wastepaper for the extraction of cellulose nanocrystals

Abstract

The study reports on the preparation of cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) from wastepaper, as an environmental friendly approach of source material, which can be a high availability and low-cost precursor for cellulose nanomaterial processing. Alkali and bleaching treatments were employed for the extraction of cellulose particles followed by controlled-conditions of acid hydrolysis for the isolation of CNCs. Attenuated total reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR FTIR) spectroscopy was used to analyze the cellulose particles extracted while Transmission electron microscopy images confirmed the presence of CNCs. The diameters of CNCs are in the range of 3-10nm with a length of 100-300nm while a crystallinity index of 75.9% was determined from X-ray diffraction analysis. The synthesis of this high aspect ratio of CNCs paves the way toward alternative reuse of wastepaper in the production of CNCs.

A new approach to obtain cellulose nanocrystals and ethanol from eucalyptus cellulose pulp via the biochemical pathway

“…Previous works reporting CNC production by acid methods applied to sources of cellulose including eucalyptus showed the advantage of the enzymatic method and found similar ranges of length and diameter, with L = 175–142 nm and D = 11–15 nm for eucalyptus cellulose, L = 100–300 nm and D = 3–10 nm for waste paper, and L = 500 nm and D = 1–9 nm for wood . However, it is important to emphasize that obtaining CNC using enzymatic hydrolysis alone is innovative.…”

Poly(butylene succinate -co- butylene adipate)/cellulose nanocrystal composites modified with phthalic anhydride

“…Cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) has attracted a great deal of interest in the composites field due to its appealing intrinsic properties such as good mechanical properties (longitudinal modulus close to 150 GPa), high aspect ratio (10~70) and high surface area (Kargarzadeh, Sheltami, Ahmad, Abdullah, & Dufresne, 2015;Arrieta, Fortunati, Dominici, López, & Kenny, 2015;Klemm, et al, 2011;Habibi, Lucia, & Rojas, 2010;Moon, Martini, Nairn, Simonsen, & Youngblood, 2011), as well as the fact that it is renewable and biodegradable (Danial, et al, 2015). Beside the field of traditional polymers (Iyer, Schueneman, & Torkelson, 2015;Mariano, E. I. Kissi, & Dufresne, 2015;Bettaieb, Khiari, Dufresne, Mhenni, & Belgacem, 2015).…”

Extraction of thermally stable cellulose nanocrystals in short processing time from waste newspaper by conventional acid hydrolysis

“…Calculation of the diameter of the obtained CNC rods was performed by [24]. The average diameter was 12.3±2.8 nm, an acceptable value in comparison with those in previous reports [10,17,19,23,25].…”

“…In the effort of waste newspaper utilization for CNC extraction, some preliminary results have been reported. CNC were extracted by boiling the material for more than 12 h, reboiling the resulting pulp after subjecting it to alkali treatment (5% (w/v) NaOH), and applying bleaching treatments (2% (v/v) NaClO) followed by controlled-condition of acid hydrolysis (60% (v/v) H 2 SO 4 solution at 45°C for 1 h) [10]. The CNC were successfully isolated with a crystallinity index of 75.9%.…”

“…However, the thermal behavior of CNC has a large variation, depending on the source and the chemical treatment of the raw material. To obtain CNC with good thermal stability from old newspaper, this study followed the acid hydrolysis approach with two-step pretreatment based on previous studies [10][11][12]. More importantly, this study proposed a shorter CNC extraction process, with a marginal processing time for pretreatment of raw material and acid hydrolysis of the pretreated pulp.…”