Synthesis and Characterization of Microcrystalline Cellulose from Cotton Textile Waste

Cotton is a natural resource that almost consists of 95% of cellulose and it is considered as the purest form of the naturally occurring cellulose. In the past recent years, cotton consumption demand in textile industry increased than the production. In textile engineering cotton blended with various other synthetic fibers such as polyester, nylon and lycra. Therefore, the fabric recycling methods are quite complicated due to mixture/blend of materials in garment waste. In this study, method was developed to identify the amount of cotton present in the cotton/polyester blend based on Fourier transformed infrared (FTIR) second-order derivative spectroscopic method. Microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) was extracted by using the recycle cotton waste. MCC indicates high economic value and remarkable physical properties like specific surface chemistry, biodegradability, low toxicity, renewability and low CO₂ emissions into the atmosphere during their production cycle. The study discussed the properties including; morphological features and size (Scanning electron microscopy (SEM)), chemical functionality (Fourier transformed infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy), degree of crystallinity (X-ray diffraction (XRD)) and thermal properties (Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA)). The yield of the MCC was 42% while length, crystallinity index and thermal degradation starting temperature recorded as 20-60μm, 58% and 315°C respectively.