Abstract
Organic aerogels based on two important and widely abundant renewable resources, soy proteins (SP) and nanofibrillar cellulose (NFC) are developed from precursor aqueous dispersions and a facile method conducive of channel- and defect-free systems after cooling and freeze-drying cycles that yielded apparent densities on the order of 0.1 g/cm3. NFC loading drives the internal morphology of the composite aerogels to transition from network- to fibrillar-like, with high density of interconnected cells. Composite aerogels with SP loadings as high as ca. 70 % display a compression modulus of 4.4 MPa very close to that obtained from reference, pure NFC aerogels. Thus, the high compression modulus of the composite system is not compromised as long as a relatively low amount of reinforcing NFC is present. The composite materials gain moisture (up to 5 %) in equilibrium with 50 % RH air, independent of SP content. Furthermore, their physical integrity is unchanged upon immersion in polar and non-polar solvents. Fast liquid sorption rates are observed in the case of composite aerogels in contact with hexane. In contrast, water sorption is modulated by the chemical composition of the aerogel, with an important contribution from swelling. The potential functionalities of the newly developed SP–NFC composite green materials can benefit from the reduced material cost and the chemical features brought about the amino acids present in SPs.
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Acknowledgments
LignoCell project, supported by the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (TEKES) and Academy of Finland is gratefully acknowledged. The authors are also thankful for funding support provided by the United Soybean Board (USB) under project numbers 2490 and 2466. We are grateful to Mika Kankkunen from Stora Enso for his help in performing tomography analyses. We appreciate very much the discussions with Prof. Olli Ikkala (Aalto University) and his group on the manufacture of cellulosic aerogels. Also, discussions with Dr. Joseph Jakes (Forest Products Lab, USDA) are gratefully acknowledged.
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Arboleda, J.C., Hughes, M., Lucia, L.A. et al. Soy protein–nanocellulose composite aerogels. Cellulose 20, 2417–2426 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-013-9993-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-013-9993-4