Advanced nanocomposites based on natural reinforcements

Fillers and Reinforcements for Advanced Nanocomposites. http //dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-100079 3.00003 X 

These natural nanohbers offer some interesting potential to serve as sustainable alternatives to conventional materials, especially to produce composites to subsdtute for oil-based engineering plastics. However, some drawbacks need to be resolved. The major problem of plant- and animal-derived cellulose and chitin is the costiy extraction processes. The energy consumption is excessively high whereas the production yield is too low. Moreover, some of the processes require expensive devices, restricting the research to those laboratories with access to such equipment, and therefore slowing down the development of new nanocomposites. 

tensile modulus and strength were increased over those of neat matrix resin, with gains in heat distortion temperature as well. 

In 1998, a different nanofibrillation process was proposed by Taniguchi and Okamura (1998). This time a grinder was used to accomplish nanofibrillation. An aqueous suspension of cellulose fibers is passed through a gap between two 

Other interesting processes include cryocrushing (Chakraborty et al., 2005) and ultrasonication (Zhao et al., 2007). Cryocrushing consists of pretreating libers with a laboratory beater PFI-type mill and lieezing the liber aqueous suspension with liquid nitrogen. The libers are nanolibrillated by the mechanical action of a cast iron mortar and pestie. In ultrasonication, ultrasound waves are applied to the liber aqueous suspension, and fibrillation is accomplished by the creation and collapse of microbubbles by acoustic cavitation. 

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