Preparation and characterization of bamboo nanocrystalline cellulose

Abstract

Nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC) has many potential applications because of its special properties. In this paper, NCC was prepared from bamboo pulp. Bamboo pulp was first pretreated with sodium hydroxide, followed by hydrolysis with sulfuric acid. The concentration of sulfuric acid and the hydrolysis time on the yield of NCC were studied. The results showed that sulfuric acid concentration had larger influence than the hydrolysis time on the yield of NCC. When the temperature was 50oC, the concentration of sulfuric acid was 48wt% and the reaction time was 30 minutes, a high quality of nanocrystalline cellulose was obtained; under these conditions, the length of the nanocrystalline cellulose ranged from 200 nm to 500 nm, the diameter was less than 20 nm, the yield was 15.67wt%, and the crystallinity was 71.98%, which is not only higher than those of cellulose nanocrystals prepared from some non-wood materials, but also higher than bamboo cellulose nanocrystals prepared by other methods.