Upcycling corn cropping waste by nanocellulose production

Waste revaluation is a topic of interest in science and has been widely explored to produce nanocellulose, showing the unlimited application potential and production growth. This work evaluates the nanocellulose production from high cellulose content corn crop waste (stalk, cob, and husk). To produce nanocellulose, chemical isolation, and bleaching were used for corn wastes, followed by a mechanical ball milling fibrillation at three different periods (6h, 9h, and 12h). Nanocellulose was evaluated using dynamic light scattering, zeta potential, infrared (FTIR) and Raman spectrometry, X-ray diffraction (XRD), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Ball milling fibrillation time increases the crystallinity index (CI) in all corn waste cellulose samples. Also, nanometric-scale sizes (107–335 nm of hydrodynamic radius) and a certain dissolution stability were achieved due to their chemical constitution. The morphology shows nanofibrils for each sample, with diameters ranging from 2.03 to 16.73 nm after 12h of ball milling. This study shows an efficient green method to obtain nanocellulose from corn crop wastes with potential for applications in several fields.