Extraction and Characterization of Nanocellulose from Saw Dust

Uttam Kumar; Payal Sharma; Kanchan L. Singh; Ashok Kumar

Abstract

In this work, nanocellulose was extracted and fibrillated from wooden saw dust of Malaysian wood. The fibrillation of cellulose nanoparticles was done by two major steps such as chemical pre-treatment and acid hydrolysis. Firstly, the saw dust was pre-treated with alkali, and then de-waxing of saw dust was done. Then cellulose was extracted. Finally, it was chemically washed etc. The extracted chemically purified cellulose was further treated with acid hydrolysis process and then fibrillated into nanofibres by using high intensity ultrasonication. After the fibrillation process of nanofibres, some basic characterization process were adopted for determination of presence of functional groups, morphology, shape and size etc. by FTIR, FE-SEM, EDS and XRD. The FTIR result indicated that lignin and hemicelluloses were eliminated from cellulose. The XRD result showed that the crystallinity was approximately 61.64% and diameters of fibres ranged from 8 to 20 nm. The EDS result confirmed that nanocellulose particles contain carbon and oxygen as main component. Keywords: Saw dust, chemical treatment, ultrasonication, nanocellulose, nanocomposite