셀룰로오스 나노섬유를 이용한 친환경 고흡수성 수지 제조를 위한 기초 연구 = Fundamental Study on the Manufacture of Eco-friendly Super-absorbent Polymers Using Cellulose Nanofibers

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Super-absorbent polymers (SAPs) are materials with excellent ability to absorb and retain hundreds of times their weight in water with a three-dimensional structure and are used in various fields such as personal hygiene, agriculture, and medicine. The SAP currently in commercial use uses acrylic acid, petrochemical polymers, as its main raw material, and has the disadvantage of having negative environmental impacts such as emitting hazardous gases and global warming when disposed of after use. In this study, carboxymethylated cellulose nanofibers (CM-CNFs) were made from cotton linter mixed pulp (CLMP) and hardwood bleached kraft pulp (Hw-BKP) to replace the commercial petrochemical SAP with an eco-friendly SAP, and hydroxyethyl cellulose (HEC) was added to make the eco-friendly SAP. To analyze the characteristics of the prepared SAP, the water absorption and gel content were measured to evaluate its potential use as an SAP, and the characteristics of two types of SAP made from different raw materials were compared to evaluate the potential use of CLMP. CLMP showed the maximum absorption when 10% HEC was added to CM-CNFs, and Hw-BKP showed the maximum absorption when 30% HEC was added. Both types of pulp showed water absorption of about 100 times, and the water absorption and gel content of CLMP were higher than those of Hw-BKP.
Therefore, it was confirmed that the performance of the eco-friendly SAP was the best when CM-CNFs made from CLMP and 10% HEC was added.