Analysis of cellulose extracted from waste products

Being the most abundant biodegradable polymer on earth, cellulose has been researched for many decades by exploring its numerous sources in nature. Although various sources have been reported so far, however, this work presents compared study of two different sources of the most valuable material, "Cellulose," i.e., tomato peel as the natural source and waste cotton cloth as the synthetic source. These two sources are basically waste products used for cellulose extraction and further for the isolation of the nanometric size of extracted cellulose particles (NCell). Several methods have been reported for extraction and isolation of NCell, but the present study followed 3-step simplest process, i.e., alkaline treatment, bleaching treatment, and acid hydrolysis. However, commercial microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) was used as a comparison and treated by the same process as extracted cellulose for the isolation of NCell. The extracted cellulose(s) and NCell(s) were analyzed by means of the transmission electron microscope ( TEM), dynamic light scattering (DLS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and UV-visible absorption spectroscopy (UV-Vis), and Raman spectroscopy. The results confirmed that the extracted sample was the cellulose species, and the prepared NCell(s) exhibited high crystallinity as compared to that from MCC. This study evidenced that the NCell(s) prepared by waste products (tomato peel and waste cotton cloth) has the potential equivalent to or better than MCC. This paves the way for alternative use of tomato peels and waste cotton cloth for its significant contribution to science and technology for its different potential applications.