Preparation of nanocellulose from a kenaf core using E-beam irradiation and acid hydrolysis

Recently, the rapidly expanding use of nanocellulose has been focused on abundant, light-weight, sustainable, biodegradable, and potential materials. This paper presents a summary of the findings of an exploratory study conducted to investigate the facile processing of nanocellulose from a kenaf core using electron beam irradiation. In this study, nanocellulose was produced by first isolating cellulose from a kenaf core, and then conducting electron beam irradiation and acid hydrolysis followed by a TEM analysis to confirm the form of the nanocellulose fibers. As the dose of electron beam irradiation increased, the crystallinity, molecular weight, polydispersity, and decomposition temperature of cellulose decreased. Such results influenced the size distribution and yield in acid hydrolysis; as the absorbed dose and acid hydrolysis reaction time increased, the yield of nanocellulose decreased while the size distribution became narrower.