Ball milling effect on paper cardboard waste valorisation for sugar extraction

• Main Author: Yoong, Adrian Kar Joon
• Other Authors: Hong Li
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2024
• Subjects: Engineering; Biomass valorisation
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/177494
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Over the years as human population continue to rise, the production of wastes also follows an upward trend. These issues bring along challenges such as rising energy demand and diminishing landfills, causing a global concern. Many countries have begun taking measures by placing a huge emphasis on zero wastes, to avoid sending wastes to landfills, incinerators, or any other part of the environment. Besides adopting the 3R initiative to Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, harnessing biofuel from lignocellulosic materials also prove to be a feasible solution to help manage wastes and combat the global carbon emissions. Pre-treatments are required to disrupt the complex structure of lignocellulosic materials before obtaining biofuel. This allows the cellulose to be more accessible during the hydrolysis processes. This study presents the present-day approaches for handling paper cardboard wastes, investigating methods to efficiently extract lignocellulose biomass. In this research, the breaking down of cellulose in paper cardboard waste using ball milling with different energy conditions will be investigated. The paper cardboard waste is reduced to microns for greater cellulose accessibility while minimising ball mill energy consumption. The goal of this study is to maximise the ball milling efficiency while minimising energy consumption by evaluating factors such as sugar yield and time. For this study, the parameters involved are speed, time, and milling conditions. The optimal parameters are identified by analysing the outcomes from seven experiments under varying speed and time settings, and in dry milling conditions. Whist conducting these experiments with added-on research, it is evident that the valorisation of paper cardboard waste can help to greatly alleviate the pressure of waste production while providing an alternative sustainable source of fuel for everyday applications.