Synthesis and characterization of cellulose acetate produced from recycled newspaper

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Carbohydrate Polymers 73 (2008) 74–82 www.elsevier.com/locate/carbpol

Synthesis and characterization of cellulose acetate produced from recycled newspaper
Guimes Rodrigues Filho a,*, Douglas Santos Monteiro a, Carla da Silva Meireles a, Rosana Maria Nascimento de Assuncao a, Daniel Alves Cerqueira a, ¸˜ b Hernane Silva Barud , Sidney J.L. Ribeiro b, Younes Messadeq b a  ˆ ˆ ´ Instituto de Quımica da Universidade Federal de Uberlandia, Uberlandia, Minas Gerais, Av. Joao Naves de Avila 2121, ˜ Caixa Postal 593, CEP: 38400-902, Brazil b ´ Instituto de Quı mica da Universidade Estadual Paulista, Campus de Araraquara, SP, Brazil

Received 2 August 2007; received in revised form 4 September 2007; accepted 5 November 2007 Available online 13 November 2007

Abstract In this work, the viability of recycling newspaper for producing cellulose acetate was tested. Newspaper recycling is extremely important not only for the environment preservation, but also from the economical point of view of aggregating value to this residue. Cellulose acetate was produced from a homogeneous acetylation, and then characterized by FTIR, DSC and TGA. Acetylation times were 48 h for as received newspaper (CA48) and 24 h for delignified newspaper (CA24), resulting in cellulose diacetate (DS = 1.98 ± 0.22) for CA48 and cellulose triacetate (DS = 2.79 ± 0.02) for CA24, respectively. Membranes of these materials were produced and characterized according to the previously mentioned techniques and by measurements of water vapor flux, which were compared to membranes of nanofiltration SG from OsmonixÒ. Results showed that independently of a purification step, it is possible to produce cellulose acetate membranes through the chemical recycling of newspaper and that membrane CA24 presents thermal stability comparable to membranes produced of commercial cellulose acetate. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Cellulose acetate; Newspaper;