Abstract
Wood–plastic composites (WPCs) are a type of environmentally friendly materials widely used in daily life. This paper selected low-value biomass, corn stalk (CS), as the lignocellulosic resource for polyvinyl chloride (PVC)-based WPCs. To depict the relationship between lignocellulosic composition (cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin) and mechanical performance of WPCs, pretreatments have been optimized to selective removal of lignin using an alkaline-EtOH stewing process and selective removal of hemicellulose using an acid stewing process. The αC sample, in which both lignin and hemicellulose were removed, shows the highest degree of crystallinity (72.60%) as estimated from X-ray diffraction analysis results and fibrous morphology with the highest aspect ratio as seen in scanning electron microscopy images. Compared with PVC/CS, PVC/αC gives a substantial increase in tensile strength and modulus by 37.21 and 21.66% and flexural strength and modulus by 29.98 and 34.88%, respectively. These improvements lie in the reinforcing effect of a fibrous structure and the improved interfacial compatibility as proven by scanning electron microscopy and dynamic mechanical analyzer results. Considering the extracted lignin and hemicellulose can be further developed to valuable biochemicals, the pretreatment to CS adds value to both WPC materials and biorefinery products.
Highlights
The environmental and climate problems caused by massive petroleum consumption have accumulated to a stage where people have to respond quickly
To selectively delignify corn stalk (CS) with maximum removal of lignin and highest retention of cellulose and hemicellulose, we explored the delignification of CS using alkaline-organic solvent stewing method as inspired by previous studies (Tang et al, 2017; Chen X. et al, 2018; Zhong et al, 2018; Chen et al, 2019)
As shown in Entries 1‒3, increasing the concentration of NaOH from 0% to 8 w% led to a higher delignification rate, but the retention rate of cellulose and hemicellulose decreased rapidly, which is not desirable
Summary
The environmental and climate problems caused by massive petroleum consumption have accumulated to a stage where people have to respond quickly. The global plastic demands are approximately 300 Mt/year nowadays (Liminana et al, 2018) and are still dominantly fulfilled by petroleum-based plastics. To replace petroleum-based plastics, at least partially, with materials from renewable resources or bio-based wastes is one practical approach to reduce the carbon footprint (Tahir et al, 2017; Andreeßen and Steinbüchel, 2019; Quiles-Carrillo et al, 2019). Wood–plastic composites (WPCs) composed of thermoplastics and wood powders have been developed since the 1990s and are nowadays widely applied as furniture and domestic/outdoor building materials (Liu et al, 2019; Sun et al, 2019; Mu et al, 2021). Corn Stork Pretreatment for WPCs environmentally friendly materials due to their partial biomass origin. Low-value lignocellulosic biomass, e.g., corn stalk (CS), and recycled thermoplastics, can be involved to minimize carbon footprint
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