Nanocrystalline Cellulose: Production and Applications

Abstract

Cellulose is an abundant renewable resource which can be used for a number of applications. It is mainly found in plant cell wall and plays a vital role in maintaining its structure. Besides plants, cellulose is also found in fungi, bacteria, and some tunicates (George and Sabapathi 2015). Cellulose is a fibrous and linear natural polymer consisting of glucose units bound by β-1,4-linkages with a degree of polymerization ranging from 10,000 to 15,000 units depending on the type of biomass (Sjostrom 1993). For more than a century, several applications of cellulose in food, pharmaceuticals, polymer, pulp, and composite industries have been studied (Coffey et al. 1995; de Souza Lima et al. 2003). Agricultural waste such as rice straw, sugarcane bagasse, sawdust, cotton stables, and woody forest residues are the main source of cellulose for various applications in industries. Production of Nano-Crystalline Cellulose (NCC) is one of the products being evaluated for a number of applications in recent years. NCC produced from cellulose fibers are regarded as nanobiomaterial with variety of applications in chemicals, food, pharmaceuticals, etc. (Habibi et al. 2010).