Potential of Nanocellulose Acetate as Surfactant for Water-Vegetable Oil Systems
Ikhsan Ibrahim, Mia Ledyastuti

Bandung Institute of Technology
Bandung Institute of Technology

Abstract

Indonesia, as an agricultural country, has a variety of abundant plants. This makes the topic of research on the use of plant waste in the form of biomass more interesting. Resizing cellulose to nanocellulose and modification of nanocellulose to nanocellulose acetate can increase its potential as a surfactant. Resizing cellulose can be done using the strong acid hydrolysis method. Modification using acetic anhydride reagent was carried out to convert the surface hydroxy functional group into acetyl. The successful production of nanocellulose was confirmed using FTIR and PSA characterization. The results of the infrared absorption spectrum of cellulose and nanocellulose showed no difference in peaks. Particle size distribution results for CNC I and CNC II showed nanocellulose has sizes 142 nm and 319 nm, respectively. The interfacial tension of water-vegetable oil systems through experiment and simulation has a similar trend. The value of interfacial tension gets smaller with the addition of nanocellulose acetate compared to the addition of nanocellulose. With the agreement between the experimental and computational results, nanocellulose acetate can act as a surfactant.

Keywords: Nanocellulose, nanocelulose acetate, surfactant, computational

Topic: Physical & Theoretical Chemistry