Characterizing Nanofibrillated Cellulose From Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunch And Its Influence As Reinforcement Agent In Epoxy Based Nanobiocomposite
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Date
2015-09
Authors
Abdul Fatah, Ireana Yusra
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Abstract
The aim of the present study was to determine the influence of sulfuric acid hydrolysis, mechanical disintegration and high pressure homogenization as an effective chemo-mechanical process for the isolation of quality nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC) from oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB) fibers. The functional groups and the crystallinity of all fibers were carried out by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD), respectively. The morphology and thermal stability were investigated by Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Differential scanning calorimetric (DSC), respectively. The FTIR results showed that lignin and hemicellulose were removed effectively from the extracted cellulose and nanofibrils. XRD analysis revealed that the percentage of crystallinity was increased from raw to microfibrillated cellulose (MFC), but the decreased for NFC was due to a breakdown of the hydrogen bond. The diameter size of the NFC determined was within 5 to 10 nm. The TGA analysis showed that the isolated NFC had high thermal stability. The finding of present study reveals that combination of sulfuric acid hydrolysis, mechanical disintegration and high pressure homogenization had proven to be an effective chemo-mechanical process to isolate cellulose nanofibers from cellulosic plant fiber. Another part of this present study was the development of epoxy based nanobiocomposite board. The objective was to investigate and analyze the reinforcing effect and dispersion of low percentage NFC loading (less than 1 %: 0%, 0.25%, 0.5% and 0.75% NFC) in the matrix material.The results obtained were compared with the prepared neat epoxy, 0% NFC (control). The characterizations including morphological, physical, mechanical and thermal properties of the nanobiocomposite were evaluated accordingly. In light microscopy (LM) images and TEM micrographs observation, the results illustrated that 0.25% and 0.5% NFC loading are homogenously dispersed in the epoxy matrix and randomly distributed throughout the sample, while the 0.75% NFC loading showed poor distribution and dispersion. The water absorption value increased with the increase in the NFC loading as compared to the neat epoxy. Mechanical testing showed that tensile and flexural properties of nanobiocomposite had posed a similar trend/pattern where they increased with increasing NFC loading percentage from 0 to 0.75%. While for the elongation at break, the value decreased with increasing NFC loading where neat epoxy (0%) showed the highest value. Low impact strength of NFC reinforced nanobiocomposite as compared to the neat epoxy was due to the low impact properties of the natural fiber. However, by increasing the NFC loading percentage, the impact strength showed incremental change due to unique properties of NFC. Thermal analysis (TGA and DSC) indicated that incorporation of NFC even at low percentage and with increasing NFC amount led to increase in thermal stability of nanobiocomposite. Therefore, from NFC reinforced epoxy based nanobiocomposite characterization, the results obtained had indicated that low NFC reinforced loading (below 1%) influenced the resin epoxy properties and showed improvement to the nanobiocomposite.
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Tecnology