Pengaruh Waktu Hidrolisis Dan Konsentrasi Asam Sitrat Terhadap Karakter Fisikokimia Selulosa Nanokristal (CNC) Dari Batang Tembakau

Abstract

Tobacco production in Indonesia is very huge and produces a large amount of waste of tobacco stem, however the stem waste has not been utilized and managed optimally. One potential use of tobacco stem waste is processing it to obtain cellulose nanocrystals (CNC). Several studies that have been reported show that CNC is produced through hydrolysis of cellulose using strong acids. Organic acids such as citric acid can be used as a substitute for strong acids because they are considered more environmentally friendly. The aim of this research is to obtain CNC from tobacco stems through citric acid hydrolysis and study the optimum hydrolysis time and tha optimum concentration of the acid and determine its physical and chemical characteristics. Cellulose from tobacco stems are first isolated through delignification and bleaching stages. The pulp resulting from delignification is bleached and the chemical components are determined which include water content, cellulose content and lignocellulose content. The resulting cellulose is then hydrolyzed using citric acid, then the solution is washed with distilled water until the pH is neutral. Ultrasonication is carried out to reduce the size of large fibers to produce small or nano-sized nanocellulose. Tobacco stems, tobacco stem cellulose and tobacco CNC produced at the optimum hydrolysis time and concentration of citric acid were characterized their crystallinity, functional groups, morphology and particle size. The results showed that CNC from isolated tobacco stems had the highest crystallinity of 66.1972% and a tobacco cellulose content of 69.31%, 2.6% lignin and 4.71% hemicellulose. Hydrolysis time of 6 hours and citric acid concentration of 3.5M are the optimum parameters which produce the highest crystallinity and low particle size distribution, namely 11.178 nm and uniform fiber morphology.