Open Access

ARTICLE

Preparation and Characterization of Waterborne Polyurethane/Cellulose Nanocrystal Composite Membrane from Recycling Waste Paper

Xing Zhou^1,*, Xin Zhang¹, Dong Wang¹, Changqing Fang^1,*, Wanqing Lei¹, Zhigang Huang², Yonghua Song¹, Xinyu He¹, Yingwei Huang¹

1 Faculty of Printing, Packaging Engineering and Digital Media Technology, Xi’an University of Technology, Xi’an, 710048, China
2 School of Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering, Beijing Technology and Business University, Beijing, 100048, China

* Corresponding Authors: Xing Zhou. Email: ; Changqing Fang. Email:

Journal of Renewable Materials 2020, 8(6), 631-645. https://doi.org/10.32604/jrm.2020.010176

Received 16 February 2020; Accepted 14 April 2020; Issue published 12 May 2020

Abstract

Cellulose plays a key role in abundant organic natural materials meeting the increasing demand for green and biocompatible products. The highly crystalline nanoscale component of cellulose nanocrystals has recently attracted great attention due to the versatile performance as filler or matrix in producing functional materials. In this work, we prepared the waterborne polyurethane via a prepolymer process, and obtained cellulose and cellulose nanocrystals from waste paper via a facile acid hydrolysis process. After that, the cellulose nanocrystals were assembled into film and mixed with polyurethane to prepare flexible polyurethane/cellulose nanocrystals composite membrane with different soaking time. The correlation between the bulk structure and applied properties including thermal resistance and mechanical property was investigated by using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and folding test. The structure analysis indicates that cellulose nanocrystals prepared from used paper have a quality similar to that of commercial cellulose. Meanwhile, the cellulose nanocrystals have been mixed with polyurethane uniformly. Polyurethane can significantly benefit to the thermal resistance and mechanical property of the cellulose nanocrystals film. The polyurethane/cellulose nanocrystals composite membrane present good flexibility and may hold a significantly potential application as visual and flexible material.

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