Investigation of eco-friendly cellulosic nanoparticles potential as reinforcement agent in the production of natural rubber composites

This research focuses on the use of cellulosic nanoparticles obtained from coconut husk, bamboo and cotton linter as reinforcing phase in natural rubber composites with the objective to study the effect of these cellulosic particles and loading ratio on the mechanical, thermal and morphological properties of the resultant composites. Vulcanized natural rubber composites were prepared using cellulosic nanoparticles obtained from bamboo (BNC), coconut husk (CHNC), cotton linter (CLNC) and carbon black (CB) as reinforcing material/fillers. These reinforcing material/fillers were compounded alongside with vulcanizing agents using two roll mixing mill and subsequently cured in order to introduce crosslinks into rubber chains. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) revealed that the free volume holes in the neat rubber were drastically reduced by incorporation of these nanoparticles into the rubber matrix. The differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) study showed a slight shift in the melting temperature of bamboo based composite from 360 to 350 oC while thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA) showed that the incorporation of bamboo and cotton linter based nanoparticles shifted the thermal stability of neat rubber matrix from 266 to 299 and 300 oC respectively. Coconut husk based composites showed a trend of increase in tensile strength from 1.8 to 3.82 MPa with filler loading of 0 to 25 weight %, while bamboo, cotton linter and carbon black based nanocomposites gave their highest values of 3.16, 3.92 and 4.50 MPa respectively at filler content of 30 weight %.Cellulosic nanoparticles obtained from biomass studied in this experiment can replace or serve as alternative materials to carbon black especially in moderate load bearing rubber articlesKeywords: Mechanical Properties; Cellulosic Nanoparticles; Rubber-Matrix Composites; Carbon Blac

An upgraded bio-oil produced from sugarcane bagasse via the use of HZSM-5 zeolite catalyst

The pyrolysis upgrading of bio-oil from sugarcane bagasse (SB) using ZSM-5 zeolite catalyst was carried out in a fixed bed reactor to determine the effects of heating rate, temperature, and catalyst/biomass ratio on yield of bio-oil and their chemical compositions. Proximate analysis indicated that SB has 13.2% moisture content. The ultimate analysis carried out established that the percentage of carbon content is higher (48.2%) than oxygen content (44%) while the fibre content analysis showed 26.4% lignin, 33.3% cellulose, 30.1% hemicellulose. The heating rate, temperature and catalyst/biomass ratio were varied in the range of 10–50 °C/min, 400–600 °C and 0.05–0.25 respectively. The non-catalytic pyrolysis gave the maximum percentage yield (45.67 wt%) of bio-oil at a pyrolysis temperature of 600 °C, heating rate of 50 °C/min, sweeping gas flow rate of 40 mL/min and the catalytic pyrolysis gave 40.83 wt% of bio-oil at the same conditions. The FT-IR spectra showed that the non-catalytic bio-oil is dominated by oxygenated compounds (acids, ketones, aldehydes, alcohols), while the catalytic bio-oil had preponderances of desirable compounds (alkanes, alkenes, aromatics, phenols). The chemical composition of the bio-oils was analyzed using GC–MS, which revealed that the quality of the bio-oil has been improved using HZSM-5 catalyzed pyrolysis. Keywords: Pyrolysis, Zeolite, Bio-oil, Chemical composition, Fixed-bed reacto

Application of factorial analysis for quicklime production from limestone

Production of quicklime from limestone was investigated in this study. Two level Full Factorial Design has been employed to study the effect of different experimental variables on the production of quicklime. Two variables of calcinations temperature (800 oC and 1000 oC), calcinations time (30 mins and 60 mins) and limestone particle size (0.3 mm and 6 mm) were used to identify the significant effects and interactions in the limestone calcination batch studies. An empirical model has been developed using the experimental data. The results show that production of quicklime was strongly affected by the variations in calcinations temperature, calcinations time and limestone particle sizes. The factorial analysis also suggested that there is a significant interaction between calcination temperature and calcination time to produce quicklime of high yield and reactivity. The maximum quicklime quality yield of 94.97% was achieved when the production was carried out at 1000 °C, calcinations time of 30 minutes with limestone particle size of 0.3 mm. The result of Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of 3.44% less than minimum of 15% obtained from the validation and confirmatory experiment shows that the regression is suitable for predicting the yield of quicklime from limestone.Keywords: limestone, quicklime, Full Factorial Design, Yield, Reactivit