Avaliação de Produção e Caracterização de Nanofibrilas de celulose

Abstract

The present study had as objective to produce vegetable cellulose nanofibrils with brown and bleached kraft pulp by of a pre-tratment enzymatic and later a mechanical, with the purpose of decreased the energy waste. For this, cellulose pulp samples were previously destructured by water saturation and dismembered in a mechanical shredder, after were stored under refrigeration at 5°C. For the enzymatic pretreatment, it was used the commercial enzyme Cellic Ctec-2, in percentages ranging from 0.01 to 0.1% in a controlled hydrolysis with neutral pH, at ambient temperature for 1 hour, being that the 0.01% amount samples underwent a 1 and 2 hours hydrolysis. After the expected time, the pulp was passed in a disk mill, where there was an energy meter. The pulps underwent several passes through the mill to the point of turning into a viscous gel. To partition the enzymatic action the contents were heated to 85°C. The gels were stored under 5°C. The process was characterized by the energy waste measured for each sample with differents treatments and with its controls, besides being measured the yield of each gel produced. The samples were characterized by their rheological properties, how about the thermochemical properties (TGA and DTG, FTIR), crystalline (X-RAY) and morphological aspects (SEM and MET). According to the results, it was observed that the biotechnological process used was practicable for the nanofibrils production, because this, decreased the process energy waste and with the lowest enzymatic loadin g (0.01%) it was observed the nanofibrils production with smaller dimensions . The brown pulp without even having gone through delignification processes showed herself promissing to the the nanofibrils of plant cellulose production.