Synthesis and Characterization of Carboxymethylcellulose from Sunt ( Acacia nilotica) Sawdust

Abstract

Acacia nilotica wood shaving (Sawdust) is an industrial residue of acacia nilotica wood processing. It composes of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. This study aims to utilize wood shaving for preparing and characterizing carboxymethylcellulose (CMC). In this study, cellulose was extracted from wasteful acacia nilotica wood shaving with sodium hydroxide (NaOH), then converted to commercially valuable CMC material by etherification reaction using MCA as etherifying agents, in the presence of NaOH. Many conditions influence the course of etherification reaction was fixed. These conditions were the weight of cellulose (5 g), weight of MCA (6 g) and the reaction temperature (55 C). However, the solvent (isopropanol) was replaced with a cheaper and less hazardous one (ethanol). In addition, various amounts of sodium chloride (NaCl) were introduced to the reaction mixture to study its influence to enhance the degree of substitution (DS). The optimum amount of NaCl needed to produce CMC of high DS value (0.8124) was found to be 10 g. The synthesized CMC Material was characterized by X-Rays Diffraction and FT-IR and they were found to be comparable to commercial CMC materials. This study clearly showed that the biomass acacia nilotica wood shaving is promising source of cellulose for the production of commercially valuable CMC material with high DS value.