Nanocellulose reinforced lightweight composites produced from cotton waste via integrated nanofibrillation and compounding

Cotton is a natural fiber containing more than 95% of cellulose. With worldwide cotton consumption continuously increasing, the amount of cotton waste generated is enormous. Most of the cotton waste ends up in landfill or incinerators, resulting in a huge waste of this excellent natural resource. In this project, cotton waste was recycled to produce polypropylene nanocomposites. Instead of using the traditional two-step nanofiber extraction and compounding technique, an integrated process was adopted to combine nanofibrillation and compounding into one step. Results showed that cotton fibers with a slight prefibrillation and hydrophobic surface modification were successfully fibrillated into tens to hundreds of nanometers in width during compounding. The nanofibers reinforced polypropylene composites exhibited significantly enhanced tensile and flexural strength and moduli. For instance, when 30% fibers from bleached white and indigo-dyed denim fabrics were introduced, the tensile moduli of the resultant composites reached 4.57 and 4.59 GPa, respectively, compared to 1.60 GPa, the modulus of neat PP. Meanwhile, denim fabrics had a remarkable reinforcing effect on the composites’ impact strength attributing to the hydrophobic indigo dyes that improved the interfacial bonding between cotton fibers and the matrix. The highest impact strength of denim reinforced composites was 4.96 kJ/m(2) with 20% fiber loading; while the impact strength of neat polypropylene was 2.46 kJ/m(2). The low water uptake of the composites further indicated the excellent adhesion at the filler/matrix interface. In general, a very promising processing technique to recycle cotton waste for high-value products was demonstrated.