Mahmood Hamayoun, Mehmood Saqib, Shakeel Ahmad, Iqbal Tanveer, Kazmi Mohsin Ali, Khurram Abdul Rehman, Moniruzzaman Muhammad
Department of Chemical, Polymer & Composite Materials Engineering, University of Engineering & Technology, New Campus, Lahore 54890, Pakistan.
Department of Hydraulic Engineering, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, Stevinweg 1, 2628 CN Delft, The Netherlands.
Polymers (Basel). 2021 Jan 26;13(3):388. doi: 10.3390/polym13030388.
Glycerol pretreatment is a promising method for the environmentally-friendly transformation of lignocellulosic materials into sustainable cellulose-rich raw materials (i.e., biopolymer) to fabricate biocomposites. Here, a comparison of aqueous acidified glycerol (AAG) pretreatment of wheat straw (WS) with alkaline, hot water, and dilute acid pretreatments on the thermal and mechanical characteristics of their fabricated composite board is presented. A comparison of total energy expenditure during WS pretreatment with AAG and other solutions was estimated and a comparative influence of AAG processing on lignocellulosic constituents and thermal stability of WS fiber was studied. Results imply that AAG pretreatment was superior in generating cellulose-rich fiber (CRF) as compared to other pretreatments and enhanced the cellulose contents by 90% compared to raw WS fiber. Flexural strength of acidic (40.50 MPa) and hot water treated WS composite (38.71 MPa) was higher compared to the value of 33.57 MPa for untreated composite, but AAG-treated composites exhibited lower values of flexural strength (22.22 MPa) compared to untreated composite samples. Conversely, AAG pretreatment consumed about 56% lesser energy for each kg of WS processed as compared to other pretreatments. These findings recognize that glycerol pretreatment could be a clean and new pretreatment strategy to convert agricultural waste into high-quality CRF as a sustainable raw material source for engineered biocomposite panels.
甘油预处理是一种很有前景的方法，可将木质纤维素材料以环境友好的方式转化为可持续的富含纤维素的原材料（即生物聚合物），用于制造生物复合材料。在此，本文对小麦秸秆（WS）的酸化甘油水溶液（AAG）预处理与碱性、热水和稀酸预处理对其制成的复合板的热性能和力学性能进行了比较。估算了WS用AAG和其他溶液预处理期间的总能量消耗，并研究了AAG处理对WS纤维的木质纤维素成分和热稳定性的比较影响。结果表明，与其他预处理相比，AAG预处理在生成富含纤维素的纤维（CRF）方面更具优势，与未处理的WS纤维相比，纤维素含量提高了90%。酸性（40.50 MPa）和热水处理的WS复合材料的抗弯强度（38.71 MPa）高于未处理复合材料的33.57 MPa，但与未处理的复合材料样品相比，AAG处理的复合材料的抗弯强度值较低（22.22 MPa）。相反，与其他预处理相比，AAG预处理每处理1千克WS消耗的能量少约56%。这些发现表明，甘油预处理可能是一种清洁的新预处理策略，可将农业废弃物转化为高质量的CRF，作为工程生物复合板的可持续原料来源。
