Cellulose Isolation from Tropical Water Hyacinth for Membrane Preparation

The presence of water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) as an aquatic plant in many lakes or other basins causes many conservation problems. Many efforts have been devoted to overcome these problems such as by utilization of water hyacinth for energy production, for water treatment, etc. In this research, cellulose was isolated from water hyacinth and further used for membrane preparation. Cellulose isolation was performed by extraction followed by acetylation resulting cellulose diacetate. The membranes were prepared by phase separation methods. The resulting membranes were then characterized by measuring water flux and surface chemistry (by FTIR). In addition, the membranes were examined for filtering humic acid solution as a model of surface water. The results show that cellulose can be isolated from water hyacinth and can further be processed into cellulose diacetate with the yield of 5,6%. The membrane preparation shows that the concentration of polymer and evaporation time influence the performance of the membrane, where the greater concentration of the cellulose polymer and the longer of the evaporation time results in the denser and the smaller membrane pores.