Effect of Chemical Treatment Sequence on Pineapple Peel Fiber: Chemical Composition, Thermal Stability and Thermal Degradation Kinetics

Millions of tons of fruit wastes are generated globally every year from residual agriculture, which makes essential to find alternative uses to increase their aggregate value and reduce the impact of environmental damage. The present study aimed to explore pineapple peel as an alternative source of cellulose by evaluating its composition and physical properties, which are essential to provide a clue to its application function diverse. Cellulose was extracted by a sequence of chlorine-free treatments to delignify the fresh pineapple peels, followed by characterization using chemical composition, XRD, FTIR, SEM and TGA to determine its crystallinity, structural properties, morphology thermal characteristics, and thermal degradation kinetic study. The result revealed that the pineapple peel amorphous segments containing hemicelluloses and lignin were extensively removed with increasing chemical treatments, leading to increased purity, crystallinity index and thermal stability of the extracted materials. The maximum degradation, and crystallinity index of the 2B isolated from the PPF are 150 °C and 80.91% respectively. The cellulose content increased from 24.05% (pineapple peel) to 80.91% (bleached cellulose). These results indicated that pretreatment via bleaching has suitable potential applications in nanocrystal production and suggests possible uses in the development of cellulose nanocrystal and application for packaging films.

Influence of Polar Groups on the Ability of Polymers to Form Nanopenocox when Heated to Reduce the Fire Hazard of Building Materials

The method for estimating the influence of polar groups on the temperature of the onset of the intense thermal degradation of polymers under heating is proposed. This estimate is based on the equation for calculating this value for the entire repeating link proposed earlier [1-4]. The method is computerized and is included as an integral part of the computer program "Cascade" (INEOS RAS). The calculated estimation is carried out for one of the structures of the rejected cycloaliphatic epoxy resin. The most "weak" group was the group –CO–. The temperature of the onset of intensive thermal degradation of this group is 547 K.

Hydrothermal Carbonization of Waste Sugarcane Bagasse for the Effective Removal of Emerging Contaminants from Aqueous Solution

Porous carbon spheres were fabricated from sugarcane bagasse using a sustainable hydrothermal carbonization process followed by alkali impregnation inert atmosphere activation. Developed spheres were technically analysed for their chemical science, structural morphology, texture, porosity with respect to size distribution, and thermal degradation. Spheres are functionally enriched with oxygenated groups showing amorphous nature portraying as a smooth surface. After activation, intensity of functional groups is reduced due to reduction reaction by KOH thereby yielding highly rich porous carbon. The active surface area developed on spheres is 111 m2 g-1 holding pores that are mesoporous in nature. Resistance to thermal exposure using TGA showed that decomposition of hemicelluloses followed by cellulose yielded aromatized carbon-rich skeleton through thermal degradation of carboxyl and hydroxyl groups. Developed carbon was found to be effective in removing Ciprofloxacin Hydrochloride from water with maximum adsorption capacity of 110.008 mg g-1. Mechanistic removal followed pseudo-second-order kinetics along with Freundlich mode of adsorption. The presence of carboxylic and hydroxyl groups in porous carbon favoured elimination of CPF from water. The development of HTC-derived carbon helped conserving the energy thereby reducing the cost requirement.