Shaul Lapidot, a doctoral student of Prof. Oded Shoseyov, in collaboration with his lab colleagues at the Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment of the Hebrew University, Rehovot, has discovered a technique to produce nano-crystalline cellulose (NCC) from the waste obtained from paper mill.
The developed NCC underwent further processing to form composite foams. These forms can be used as bio-based materials replacing synthetic foams in the composite materials industry.
Almost 50% of all the fibers primarily formed in the paper manufacturing process are disposed as sludge. Lapidot has discovered that fibers obtained from the sludge of paper mill waste are an ideal raw material for producing NCC because of their smaller dimensions, resulting in the need for a moderately less amount of chemical input and low energy to convert the fibers into NCC. Further, he found NCC to be applicable in the production of nano-structured foams which are utilized in several day-to-day applications such as in the manufacturing process of car interiors and furniture.
NCC foams developed by Lapidot and his team are light-weight and highly porous. The foams were further strengthened by reinforcing it with furan resin. Furan is a hemicellulose-based resin obtained from waste of raw crops, including the left outs from processing of rice hulls, corn cobs, oat hulls, and sugar cane.
The novel NCC foams showcase technical performance equivalent to that of the existing synthetic foams. Melodea, an Israeli-Swedish start-up company, recently received license from Yissum, Hebrew University’s technology transfer company, for converting this new technology into industrial-scale production.
Source: http://www.huji.ac.il/