Synthesis and Characterization of Sodium Carboxymethyl Cellulose from the sawdust of Pine wood

Abstract

Sawdust or wood dust is a by-product of cutting, grinding, drilling, sanding, or otherwise pulverizing wood with a saw or other tool. It is composed of cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin. This study aimed to utilize sawdust of wood for preparing sodium- carboxymethylcellulose (Na-CMC). Cellulose was isolated from sawdust of pine wood, then the cellulose powder was converted to carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) by etherification process using sodium monochloroacetic acid (Na-MCA) as etherfying agents in presence of sodium hydroxide. The amount of cellulose (2.5 g), reaction temperature (55 °C) and amount of monochloroacetic acid, MCA (2.5 g) were kept constant. The effect of various amounts of either sodium acetate or sodium nitrate was studied in this reaction for the production of Na-CMC of maximum Degree of Substitution (DS) value. The optimum amounts of these salts were found to 5g CH3COONa or 5g NaNO3. In the presence of this amount of salt, the produced CMC materials were found to have high DS values of 0.963 with CH3COONa, and 1.18 with NaNO3. The produced CMC was characterized using XRD diffractometer and Fourier Transform Infrared spectra (FT-IR). The two techniques together indicated the successful production of Na-CMC material.