Synthesis of Nanocellulose Fibrils/Particles from Cellulose Fibres Through Sporadic Homogenization

Abstract

Turbak, Snyder and Sandberg have used the term microfibrillated cellulose (MFC) or nanocellulose first time to describe the work done by them. Plant fibres have abundant cellulosic mass and are renewable in nature. This work aims to utilize the commercially available cellulose fibres (synthesized from cotton linters) as raw materials for the synthesis of nanocellulose fibrils/particles through intermittent homogenization process. Various parameters of homogenization like speed and time of processing were varied in each step and were chosen from several keen experimental observations. Soaking time of cellulose fibre solution allows swelling of them, and lopsided processing steps make the solution at room temperature, and no burn of fibres was noticed. The obtained particles have a mean diameter of 845.4 nm. An AFM image of different sizes was taken to understand the shape of obtained nanocelluolse.