Effect of electrohydrodynamic technique as a complementary process for cellulose extraction from bagasse: Crystalline to amorphous transition

Electrohydrodynamic technique (EHD) has lately received considerable attention as an important non-thermal method used for food processing. In this work the effect of EHD on physicochemical properties of cellulose extracted from bagasse was investigated. A three-step process was chosen to extract cellulose fibers, which was performed under a high voltage electric field at the beginning of each step. The cellulose fibers were then characterized using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray Diffraction (XRD), and Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA). The morphological evaluation revealed that the cellulose fibers have smaller diameter and larger length compared to the microcrystalline cellulose. Moreover, according to the XRD patterns and FTIR spectrum, EHD-treated fibers mainly showed an amorphous structure, and contained a low crystalline fraction. The amorphous structure of cellulose fibers was confirmed by TGA analysis which revealed the presence of higher proportion of amorphous cellulose fraction causes early onset of thermal decomposition.