Synthesis and Characterization of Nanocellulose from Cotton Fibers

Graduate #83
Discipline:
Subcategory: Materials Science

Tejaswini Ronur Praful - Norfolk State University
Co-Author(s): Babu R. L., Prathima Prabhu Tumkur, Sangram K. Pradhan, Aswini K. Pradhan, and Govindarajan T. Ramesh, Norfolk State University, Norfolk VA

Development of new eco-friendly carbon based materials as alternative to the sustainable energy storage devices is gaining much interest. Using a renewable and cost effective materials as source in developing such novel nanomaterials is the need of the hour. Nanocellulose has acquired attention over the past few decades due to its unique characteristics such as surface area to volume ratio, high tensile strength and excellent thermal and electrical properties. Cotton being a biomaterial and known to contain 90-95%, it serves as the ideal material for nanocellulose extraction. The nanocellulose was extracted from natural cotton fibers using chemical and enzymatic methods. Following extraction, the characterization methods like Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (EDX), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) were performed to check the purity of the sample and determine the size of the synthesized cellulose nanoparticles. The microscopy studies showed that the diameter of the particle was between 100-300 nm. The peaks from FT-IR analysis showed that most of the cellulose from cotton was converted to nanocellulose. The results obtained from characterization indicate that nanocellulose is a promising environment friendly green biomaterial and can be used in development of new energy storage devices or other biomedical applications.

Funder Acknowledgement(s): I thank Department of Material Science and Engineering, Norfolk State University to provide funding under NSF-CREST-CREAM HRD-1547771 grant to support this research. I thank Olga Trofimova; Wondwossen Arasho and Sangram Pradhan for their constant support and help in characterization experiments.

Faculty Advisor: Govindarajan T. Ramesh, gtramesh@nsu.edu

Role: I synthesized the cellulose nanoparticles material using chemical and enzymatic methods and performed all characterization studies which include SEM-EDX, FT-IR, TEM and XRD.