Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Exhibit Hall
The main goal of the present study was to produce value added cellulose nano fibrils from the soybean plant. Cellulose nano fibrils were isolated from the soy bean stalk by sodium hydroxide pretreatment. Soybean stalks were dried and crushed and the particle size less than mesh size 35 was selected for the present study. The soybean stalks were soaked with 2wt% NaOH overnight with solid to liquid ratio of 1:8 (w/v). 10% NaOH solution was added to this and autoclaved for 5hrs at 120ºC and around 30 lb pressure. Then the biomass was washed several times and to that 10% (w/v) of hydrogen peroxide was added and bleached overnight. Biomass was washed several times and sonicated with 10% 1N HCl for 5 hrs. The fibrils obtained were characterized. The FE-SEM of both treated and untreated soybean stalks showed the presence of fibers. The TEM image of the treated soybean stalk showed the presence of fibrils in the nano scale. The crystalinity of the treated and untreated biomass were analyzed by X-RD. The treated fibrils were more crystalline than the untreated one. The FT-IR spectra of the treated fibrils showed the presence of hydroxyl hydrogen. Absence of ester group, characteristics to the lignin and hemicellulose, indicates the presence of cellulose in the fibrils. Thus high value cellulose nano fibrils were produced from soybean stalk successfully.