Nanocellulose production from recycled paper mill sludge using ozonation pretreatment followed by recyclable maleic acid hydrolysis

Roi Peretz; Elizaveta Sterenzon; Yoram Gerchman; Vinod Kumar Vadivel; Thomas Luxbacher; Hadas Mamane

doi:10.1016/j.carbpol.2019.04.003

Nanocellulose production from recycled paper mill sludge using ozonation pretreatment followed by recyclable maleic acid hydrolysis

Carbohydr Polym. 2019 Jul 15:216:343-351. doi: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2019.04.003. Epub 2019 Apr 3.

Authors

Roi Peretz¹, Elizaveta Sterenzon¹, Yoram Gerchman², Vinod Kumar Vadivel¹, Thomas Luxbacher³, Hadas Mamane¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Water Research Center, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel.
² Department of Biology and Environment, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Haifa-Oranim, Tivon 3600600, Israel. Electronic address: gerchman@research.haifa.ac.il.
³ Anton Paar GmbH, Anton-Paar-Str. 20, 8054 Graz, Austria.

PMID: 31047075
DOI: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2019.04.003

Abstract

Nanocellulose (NC) have garnered much interest worldwide due to its physical and chemical properties. Nanocellulose is produced from biomass materials by bleaching pretreatment, followed by acid hydrolysis. This work demonstrated the production of NC from recycled paper sludge (RPS), a crystalline cellulose rich waste, by ozonation pretreatment, followed by maleic acid hydrolysis. Ozonation resulted in removal of lignin (as evident by TGA analysis), negative zeta potential of RPS and enhanced NC production, from 60 mg/L to over 80 mg/L after 60-120 min of ozone treatment. Maleic acid was successfully recovered, although longer ozonation times reduced the amount of acid available for recovery. These results demonstrate that ozonation can be used as an effective pretreatment for NC production.

Keywords: Acid recycling; Green engineering; Lignin removal; Nanocellulose; Ozonation; Recycled paper sludge (RPS).