POTENTIAL OF NANOCELLULOSE ACETATE AS SURFACTANT FOR WATER-VEGETABLE OIL SYSTEMS

• Main Author: Ibrahim, Ikhsan
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Subjects: Kimia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/64840
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Indonesia as an agricultural country has a variety of abundant plants. This makes the topic of research on the use of plant waste in the form of biomass more interesting. Cellulose is one of the most abundant types of biomass. Cellulose is a biomolecular polymer consisting of ?(1?4) glycosidic bonds between glucose monomers and glucose. Changing the size of cellulose to nanocellulose changes several physical properties such as viscosity, tensile strength, and surface activity. Modification of the hydroxy groups on the surface is expected to increase the potential of nanocellulose as a surfactant. Changing the size of this molecule can be done using the strong acid hydrolysis method. Modification using acetic anhydride reagent was carried out to convert the surface hydroxy functional group into acetyl. The added H2SO4 can hydrolyze the amorphous side, leaving the crystalline side and the sulfate group can sulfate the nanocellulose surface. Therefore, at the end of the process of making nanocellulose, sulfate groups were removed by washing with distilled water 8 times. The success of the manufacture of nanocellulose, was confirmed through FTIR and PSA. The results of the infrared absorption spectrum showed that there was no difference in peaks between cellulose and nanocellulose. This means that acid hydrolysis does not change the functional groups in cellulose. The results of the PSA yield size distribution for nanocellulose hydrolyzed with 45% (w/w) and 50% (w/w) H2SO4 were 142 nm and 319 nm, respectively. The success of the modification of nanocellulose into nanocellulose acetate can be observed by FTIR characterization. The presence of a new peak at a wave number of 1721 cm-1 indicates a C=O functional group and a new peak at a wave number of 1250 cm-1 indicates a C-O group, so that nanocellulose acetate was confirmed to be successfully formed. The results of the analysis regarding the measurement of the interfacial tension value of the water-vegetable oil system carried out in laboratory experiments with the computational results of the interfacial tension value calculation, resulted in a corresponding trend of data. The interfacial tension value decreased with the addition of nanocellulose acetate when compared to the addition of nanocellulose. The results of the computational RDF analysis also prove that the polar carbonyl groups present in nanocellulose acetate interact with water to form hydrogen bonds, and the C-C bonds on the pyranose ring interact with van der Waals forces with carbon in palmitic acid. With the agreement between the experimental and computational results, nanocellulose acetate can function as a surfactant.