Extraction and characterization of cellulosic fibers from sawmill waste

In the current period of time synthetic polymers are rapidly spreading among people due to the advantages of advanced mechanical properties with low cost and weight. However, due to the low biodegradability, synthetic materials produce environmental pollution. Therefore the productions of biodegradable materials are playing a major role to save the environment. All natural materials are biologically degraded by the actions of micro-organisms in the environment. The biomass is mainly consists of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin and they are the most abundant biopolymers present on the earth. Out of the three biopolymers cellulose and hemicellulose have comparatively high biodegradability due to the polysaccharide structure. Sawmill waste is one of the major waste with lack of attention in Sri Lanka. Therefore, the research is focused to produce low cost, biodegradable composite material for engineering applications by extracting cellulosic materials present in sawmill waste. For the study, separately collected five common timber samples and the mixture of each (equal mass of five most common wood wastes) were used. Finally, it concludes that the maximum percentage of cellulose and hemicellulose can be extracted from the waste wood mix sample (68. 7%) and the extracted natural polymers were characterized using FTIR analysis.