ABSTRACT
InnoTech Alberta plays a strategic role in bridging Alberta's industries by transforming biomass, including wood and crop waste, into chemicals and materials, with real-world commercial applications. Dedicated research scientists at InnoTech Alberta are experimenting with cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) produced from residual crop and wood fibre to find new environmentally sustainable products. The chemical and physical properties of CNCs produced from several feedstock and production lines at InnoTech Alberta's pilot plant are fully characterised to reveal their complete profiles to inform specific applications' development. The overall objective of InnoTech Alberta's CNC pilot plant production is the development of strategies that allow the optimisation, at large scale, of CNC yield, consistency, purity and quality, all while respecting the needs of economics. Acid hydrolysis, using concentrated acid, is the predominant and most efficient chemical method to produce CNC, with minimal energy consumption. In the CNC production process, centrifugation is used as a first-stage purification process to separate CNC from the waste stream.
