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Preparation of cellulose nanofiber from softwood pulp by ball milling

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Abstract

This paper reports the possibility of producing cellulose nanofiber from softwood pulp using a simple ball milling technique under ambient pressure and at room temperature. The effects of milling conditions including the ball-to-cellulose mass ratio, milling time, ball size and alkaline pretreatment were investigated. It was found that milling-ball size should be carefully selected for producing fibrous morphologies instead of particulates. Milling time and ball-to-cellulose mass ratio were also found important to control the fiber morphology. Alkali pre-treatment helped in weakening hydrogen bonds between cellulose fibrils and removing small particles, but with the risks of damaging the fibrous morphology. In a typical run, cellulose nanofiber with an average diameter of 100 nm was obtained using soft mechanical milling conditions using cerium-doped zirconia balls of 0.4–0.6 mm in diameter within 1.5 h without alkaline pretreatment.

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Acknowledgments

Liyuan Zhang thanks IDP Education Australia Ltd. for the IDP Student Mobility Scholarship, Dr. Warren Batchelor for providing the standard pulp sample as starting materials, Deakin Microscopy Center for SEM imaging, Chuntao Zhang for helping with the experiments, Ruoyang Chen, Monash University and Hui He, Donghua University for helping with the figures, and Dr. Xu Li from Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Dr. Tina Arbantan from Dulux Austrlia, Ltd., and Chenfan Xia, Deakin University, for proof reading the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Frontier Materials, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC, 3217, Australia

    Liyuan Zhang, Takuya Tsuzuki & Xungai Wang

  2. Department of Chemical Engineering, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, 3800, Australia

    Liyuan Zhang

  3. Research School of Engineering, College of Engineering and Computer Science, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 0200, Australia

    Takuya Tsuzuki

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  1. Liyuan Zhang
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  2. Takuya Tsuzuki
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  3. Xungai Wang
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Correspondence to Takuya Tsuzuki.

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Zhang, L., Tsuzuki, T. & Wang, X. Preparation of cellulose nanofiber from softwood pulp by ball milling. Cellulose 22, 1729–1741 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-015-0582-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-015-0582-6

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