CONCLUSION

Based on this term paper that we already done, we compare the characteristics of
natural polymer(cellulose)which are extracted by same method but from different resources
in Malaysia. Cellulose was extracted from different resources which are from mengkuang
leaves, rice husk, ficus leaf and sugarcane bagasse. Characteristics of cellulose such as
yield, crystallinity, and thermal stability .

In this study, the yield of cellulose was compared at different stages of treatments which
are from untreated, treated with alkaline to treated with bleaching agents. After undergo
alkali treatment, the percentage of hemicellulose decrease while after undergo bleaching
treatment, the percentage of lignin will decrease. Hence, percentage of cellulose increase. The
crystallinity of the extracted cellulose also increased and we notice that have higher than
untreated and pretreated. The thermal stability of the cellulose increased with its purity after
chemical treatments.

Next, we compare the characteristics of natural polymer(cellulose) which are extracted by

different methods but from same resource(sugarcane bagasse). There are three different
methods for extraction of cellulose from SCB which are sequential extractions of dewaxed
SCB with water with or without ultrasonic radiation(method 1), delignification with acidic
sodium chlorite followed by extraction with alkali(method 2), and treatment of SCB with
80% acetic acid- 70% nitric acid mixture under the condition given(method 3). We can
conclude that this method of extraction can minimize the cellulose loss and very suitable to
extract the cellulose from SCB. FTIR observation revealed that all the method of extractions
remove most of the lignin polymer. Xray diffraction results showed that the crystallinity of
cellulose decreased by the treatment of SCB with method (2) and (3). The thermal stability
increases with its purities.