BIOREFINERY. Nanocellulose characterization with mechanical fractionation

Abstract A novel fractionation method was developed to characterize nanocellulose in terms of particle size. The fractionation device ues screens or membranes with known size. The scale is in the range of micro to nano, so that NFCs can be size- or shapefractionated accordingly. The procedure is somewhat analogaus to the Sauer-MeNett fiber classifier. The reproducibility of the obtained size profile was very good. The device can also produce size specific nanocelluloses, which could be applied for scientific research purposes, e.g. nano risk assessment. Fractionation with membrane filters was able to screen out almost all particles. However, the membrane permeate contained significant amounts of dissolved substances.