Thermal Stability of Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunch (OPEFB) Nanocrystalline Cellulose: Effects of post-treatment of oven drying and solvent exchange techniques

Nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC) from biomass is a promising material with huge potentials in various applications. A big challenge in its utilization is the agglomeration of the NCC's during processing due to hydrogen bonding among the cellulose chains when in close proximity to each other. Obtaining NCC's in a non-agglomerated and non-aqueous condition is challenging. In the present work NCC's was isolated from oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB) using TEMPO-oxidation reaction method. To obtain non-agglomerated and non-aqueous products, the NCC's underwent post-treatment using oven drying (OD) and solvent exchanged (SE) techniques. The thermal stability of all samples was determined from TGA and DTG profiles whilst FTIR was used to analyze the chemical modifications that occurred under these conditions. NCC-SE has better thermal stability than the NCC-OD and its on-set degradation temperature and residue are also higher. FTIR analysis shows that NCC-SE has a slightly different chemical composition whereby the absorption band at 1300 cm(-1) (due to C-O symmetric stretching) is absent as compared to NCC-OD indicating that in NCC-SE the carboxylate group is in acid form which contribute to its thermal stability. (Keyword: Nanocrystalline cellulose, oil palm empty fruit bunch, thermal stability, oven drying, solvent exchange)