Fundamental study on the extraction of uniform nanofibers from plant-biomass

研究了从木浆中提取纤维素纳米纤维的工艺，比较了粉碎机、高压均质机、珠磨机和双螺杆挤出机等原纤化设备的优缺点。用该设备在不同时间处理经精磨机处理的漂白牛皮纸浆（软木）。原纤化纸浆的FE-SEM图像随设备和通过次数而不同。对于每个设备，澄清了结晶度的降低程度、纤维素分子量的变化和通过TGA评价的热耐久性随着通过次数的增加。比较了由原纤化纸浆制备的片材的拉伸性能。在此基础上，我们通过化学纯化（去除非纤维素组分）和高速混合器预处理（破坏纤维结构），结合高压均质化，成功地将原始干燥棉纤维分散成单个纤维素纳米纤维。

The process to extract cellulose nanofibers from wood pulp was studied to find out advantage and disadvantage of fibrillation equipment such as grinder, high-pressure homogenizer, bead mill and twin screw extruder. The refiner treated bleached kraft pulp (soft wood) was treated at various times with the equipment. FE-SEM images of fibrillated pulp differed with the equipment and the number of passes. The degree of decrease in crystallinity, changes in molecular weight of cellulose and thermal durability evaluated by TGA with the increase of the number of passes were clarified for each equipment. The tensile properties of the sheet prepared from the fibrillated pulp were compared. On the basis of the results, we succeeded to fibrillate the raw dried cotton fibers into individual cellulose naofibers by chemical purification (removal of non-cellulosic components) and a pretreatment by a high-speed blender (breaking down of fiber structures), combined with high-pressure homogenization.