1.

Result and Discussion

3.1 Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy

The main purpose of infrared was to trace the changes in the chemical composition of the surface. Chemical
composition can be interpreted based on graph shown in figure 1. This figure reveals several absorption peak. The
main absorption bands and their assignment to the different groups are shown in Table 2. The peak found at about
3500cm-1 is due to the presence C-H, O-H stretching in alkyl or aryl, which cannot be eliminated completely in
attenuated total reflection measurements.

The different spectra of the untreated and treated HBL fiber with alkali do not show any significant differences.
This is not surprising due to the fact that in case of the alkali treatment, no new groups are introduced to the fibres,
and therefore no big difference can be found. In case of the sodium hydoxide treated fibres, the problem is there are
several group slightly disappear when treated with 20g of hbl fiber and fully disappear when treated with 10g of hbl
fiber.

The HBL fiber of alkali treatment was studied by using Infrared spectrometry. The result below shows that the
HBL fiber of treatment with sodium hyrdroxide based on untreated HBL, treated HBL with sodium in 10g and 20g.
Figure 3 shows the infrared spectra obtained.
 This indicates the presence of different types of functional groups. The broad and strong band
ranging from 3000 – 3600 cm-¹ indicates the presence of – OH and – NH groups, which is consistent with
the peak at 1028 and 1352cm-¹ assigned to alcoholic C – O and C – N stretching vibration. The peaks at
2048 and 2918cm-¹ can be assigned to asymmetric and symmetric CH2 groups. The peak located at 1730
cm-¹ is a characteristic of carbonyl group stretching from carboxylic acid or ester groups. The peak at
1527 cm-¹ corresponds to the carboxylate (COO-) or C=C groups. The peak at 1352cm-¹ can be attributed
to the C –O stretching of phenolic groups. The FT – IR spectrum for treated HBL 10g loaded biosorbent
showed wave number and intensity of some peaks were shifted or substantially higher than after
biosorption and for treated HBL 20g is substantially lower than those after biosorption, suggesting the
participation of –OH, - COOˉ, and – NH2 in the binding of sodium hydroxide by HBL. The peak at 2341
cm-¹ attributed to C=O stretch disappear for treated HBL 10g after sodium hydroxide uptake. In general,
hydroxyl, carboxyl, and amino groups are the main functional groups involved in the binding of Sodium
hydroxide.

3.2 Thermogravimetric Analysis

The thermogravimetric analysis results are presented in Figure 4. The measurements were carried out in the
atmosphere of air. The first mass loss observed occurs at around 100 °C, which is due to the loss of water. This can
be observed for all the investigated samples. Afterwards, the untreated fibres show slightly lower stability than the
treated ones. Degradation starts at lower temperatures than for the treated ones, which are stable up to about 250 °C.
It could be due to the fact that some components of the cellulosic fibre, like hemicellulose or lignin, are re- moved
during the treatment process. Therefore the main remaining part is cellulose itself, which is stable against thermal
degradation up to about 250 °C. The results of differential thermal analysis, which are shown in Figure 5, are in
good accordance with the ones from the TGA. First, a small endothermic peak can be ob- served at about 100 °C
due to the loss ofwater. After- wards, the fibre degradation takes place. DTA results confirm that the untreated fibres
start to degrade earlier than the treated ones. The three treated types (acetylated, alkali and maleic anhydride treated)
show a similar behaviour over the range of degradation. The reason for that could be again the removal of some
fibre compo- nents like hemicellulose or lignin due to the treatment process.