Graft Copolymerisation of Acrylamide on Nanocrystalline Cellulose from Agricultural Waste

Nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC) is a promising renewable biomaterial that can be used as reinforcing component in high performance nano composite and as absorbent polymer. In this study, graft copolymerisation of acrylamide onto nanocrystalline cellulose gotten from plantain peel (PP) and orange mesocarp (OM) was done. The raw samples were subjected to alkali pretreatment method followed by bleaching process to extract the cellulose. Thereafter, the extracted cellulose was hydrolysed with 50% sulfuric acid at 300C for 2hours to obtain the NCC. Graft polymerisation of acrylamide onto the NCC in heterogeneous medium was initiated with ceric ammonium nitrate. The grafting conditions were 300C at a time interval of 2hours, ratio of monomer to NCC 3:1 and an initiator concentration of 0.020M. OM gave a higher NCC yield of 23.50% while PP gave a yield of 5.01%. The % polymerisation and % grafting for OM were 55.6 and 45.7 and for PP 10 and 3.2 respectively. The oil sorption analysis shows an improvement in the property of the grafted NCC compared with the raw OM and PP. This work has explored the surface modification and application of NCC using graft copolymerisation giving better understanding on this emerging nanomaterial.