Materials Balance in Extraction of Nanocellulose from Forest Pioneer Species

Forest pioneer species such as Macaranga, Leucaena and Acacia have been studied by FRIM as new potential sources for the wood industry. These species are normally fast growing and have short life span. Products such as furniture, wood composites, pulp and paper have been developed using these species. Converting these species into new emerging products such as nanocellulose were also conducted. A materials balance demonstrates the law of mass conservation and can be used to estimate the amounts of raw materials used and the quantities of products and by-products in a process. In this work, a materials balance was conducted on an enzymatic nanocellulose extraction process inclusive of pulping, bleaching and hydrolysis steps. Based on 1 kg of Macaranga tanarius wood chips, 293 g nanocellulose was produced using 250 g sodium hydroxide for pulping, 67.3 g bleaching chemicals, 8 g cellulase enzyme and 26 g sodium acetate as hydrolysis buffer. The materials balance conducted shows that the whole process requires 117 litres of water.