Comparative Study of Chemical and Mechanical Treatment Effects on Bacterial Cellulose from Nata de Coco

Abstract

In this work, bacterial cellulose was obtained from nata de coco. Initially, the samples were subjected to three types of different condition which were raw, chemical treatment and mechanical treatment. Bacterial cellulose was characterized by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), X-Ray Diffractometer (XRD) and Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM). Bacterial cellulose met the specifications of pure cellulose either using chemical or mechanical treatments proved by IR spectra reading. XRD results indicated that the crystallinity of chemical treatment bacterial cellulose is higher than the mechanical treatment bacterial cellulose which was 68.6% and 59.5% respectively. The FESEM analysis shows that the size of the bacterial cellulose that obtained from chemical treatment is smaller than mechanical treatments which were 19.42μm and 50.35μm.