The main aim of this Project is the synthesis and characterization of nanocelluloses from different sources: biotechnological, natural, and finally, chemical.
To achieve this objective, it was necessary a previous theoretical introduction explaining the concepts related with cellulose and nanocellulose. In case of cellulose, it has been studied the chemical structure, the polymorphism and properties. In case of nanocellulose, it has been deeply studied its types, its different applications and the methodology to obtain nanocellulose from raw materials, reaction times and experimental procedure.
With the aid of a bibliographic search, it is explained in a detailed way all the synthesis that were carried out in this project with its reagents, purification methods and additional processes such as sonication.
The yield obtained in the biotechnological synthesis, the natural and finally the chemical synthesis was 4,33 g/L, 0,57% and 10%, respectively. It is important to stand out that, in the natural synthesis, it was not possible to carry out a measure of the dried raw material that is the reason why it has low yield. Thanks to spectroscopic analysis of the synthetized samples from laboratory, and the samples provided by Cellulose Lab and Borregaard, the nanocelluloses were compared and the peaks from IR in all cases were quite similar.
In the case of XRD and SEM, the results confirm that there are samples that contain nanocellulose such as nata de coco and the chemical synthesis, obtaining CNF and CNC, respectively. Histograms were made from samples which were fibrous, to deeply study the size and how SEM pictures vary depending on samples.
It was realized and economic study and an environmental impact study that causes the realization of this project.
Finally, this project concludes both general and particular objectives were achieved by synthetizing and analyzing different samples of nanocellulose of different origins.
