Uşurelu Cătălina-Diana, Oprică Gabriela-Mădălina, Panaitescu Denis Mihaela, Frone Adriana Nicoleta, Damian Celina Maria, Nicolae Cristian Andi, Dima Ştefan-Ovidiu, Oancea Florin, Teodorescu Mircea
National Institute for Research & Development in Chemistry and Petrochemistry-ICECHIM, 202 Splaiul Independentei, 060021 Bucharest, Romania.
Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, National University of Science and Technology POLITEHNICA, 1-7 Gh. Polizu Street, 011061 Bucharest, Romania.
Polymers (Basel). 2025 Aug 26;17(17):2307. doi: 10.3390/polym17172307.
In a world where the negative consequences of natural resources' overexploitation for the environment are increasingly evident, repurposing waste to obtain high-value goods becomes essential. This study proposes the isolation of cellulose nanofibers from the bacterial cellulose (BC) membrane that results as a by-product during the fermentation of Kombucha tea by chemical treatment with sodium hydroxide (NaOH), sodium hypochlorite (NaClO), hydrogen peroxide (HO), sulfuric acid (HSO) or citric acid, followed by mechanical fibrillation via high-speed homogenization and microfluidization. Treatments with NaOH, NaClO, and HO were effective in the purification of Kombucha-derived BC, while HSO and citric acid exhibited a rather weak cleaning action, as revealed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Besides their cleaning effect, the applied chemical pretreatments had an important effect on the degree of fibrillation attained, as indicated by the scanning electron microscopy images. This study proposes simple and effective routes to obtain bacterial cellulose nanofibers from an inexpensive and abundant source, commonly regarded as a waste material, which can be further applied in medical and packaging applications as reinforcing agents, adsorbent materials, or scaffolds.
在一个自然资源过度开发对环境造成的负面影响日益明显的世界里,将废物重新利用以获取高价值产品变得至关重要。本研究提出通过用氢氧化钠(NaOH)、次氯酸钠(NaClO)、过氧化氢(HO)、硫酸(HSO)或柠檬酸进行化学处理,从红茶菌发酵过程中作为副产品产生的细菌纤维素(BC)膜中分离出纤维素纳米纤维,随后通过高速均质化和微流化进行机械纤维化。傅里叶变换红外光谱和X射线光电子能谱显示,用NaOH、NaClO和HO处理对红茶菌衍生的BC的纯化有效,而HSO和柠檬酸的清洁作用较弱。除了清洁效果外,扫描电子显微镜图像表明,所应用的化学预处理对达到的纤维化程度有重要影响。本研究提出了简单有效的途径,从一种通常被视为废料的廉价且丰富的来源中获取细菌纤维素纳米纤维,这些纳米纤维可作为增强剂、吸附材料或支架进一步应用于医疗和包装领域。