During the last 10 years, cocoa fruit has been promoted as a social and economic alternative to substitute illicit crops in Colombia. This trend increased the harvested area in the country nearly 40 %, significantly enhancing the production of its by-products. The valorization of these by products is economically and environmentally relevant for the chocolate industry. This work proposes new alternatives to exploit this biomass, by evaluating two different chemical treatments to isolate cellulose nanofibers- an insoluble dietary fiber which can be used to stabilize fat and reduce the caloric content of cocoa products. For this purpose, cellulose nanofibers were isolated from cocoa shells by two different chemical treatments. A long chemical treatment (LCT) that involves four stages with KOH, NaClO<sub>2</sub>, KOH, and HCl; and a short chemical treatment (SCT) that requires two stages with KOH and NaClO<sub>2</sub>. Each sample was passed through a grinder equipment (Masuko Sangyo, Supermasscolloider MKCA6-2) to deconstruct the hierarchical structure of the isolated cellulose (LCT or SCT). In order to study the effect of these chemical treatments on the physical and chemical properties of the final product, both nanocelluloses were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), X-ray diffraction (X-ray), fluorescence microscopy and atomic force microscopy (AFM). Results showed that cellulose type I was isolated by both chemical treatments. Fluorescence microscopy, TGA and FTIR showed a higher presence of non-cellulosic components such as cocoa fat and hemicelluloses in cellulose isolated by SCT (holocellulose nanofibers) than in cellulose isolated by LCT. Finally, larger diameters and lower crystallinity index were observed in cellulose isolated by SCT than in cellulose obtained by LCT, associated to a higher presence of non-cellulosic components.

Valorization of cocoa shells: Effect of two different chemical treatments on physical and chemical properties of cellulose nanofibers

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.