Production of nanofibrillary suspensions of vegetable cellulose by means of a combined process - Energy expenditure evaluation

ABSTRACT The present study had as objective to produce vegetable cellulose nanofibrils with brown and bleached Kraft pulp by means of a pretreatment enzymatic and later a mechanical,known as combined process, with the purpose of decreased the energy waste. For this, cellulose pulp samples were previously destructured by water saturation and dismantled in a mechanical sheredder, after were stored under refrigeration at 5 ° C. For the enzymatic pretreatment, it was used the commercial enzyme Cellic CTec2, in percentages ranging from 0.01 to 0.1% in a controlled hydrolysis with neutral pH, at ambient temperature for one hour, being that the 0.01% amount samples underwent 1 and 2 hors enzymatic hydrolysis. After the time of hydrolysis, the pulp was passed in a disk mill, where in this process the consumption of the energy was measured with the aid of an energy meter. For the production of the gel, the pulps were processed by the disk mill passages cycles. For enzymatic inhibition the contents ewere heated to 85 ° C. The gels were stored at 5 ° C. The process was characterized by the measure energy expenditure for each sample and its controls, in addition to measuring the yield of each gel produced. According to the results the combined process was feasible for the production