Products made of filaments as a building block are all around us, from clothes to car parts. Finding a filament made from a sustainable resource by a sustainable process is however difficult. Therefore, interest in filaments made from cellulose nanofibrils has recently increased with a vision of producing a truly sustainable and biodegradable filament. Still, optimization of the mechanical properties and identification of the optimal process for a desired application are open challenges to tackle. Here, the influence of the homogeneity of the starting material on the mechanical properties is determined, it is shown that in order to keep the nano-scale properties in a macro-scale material, the dispersion is crucial. This result is not surprising, however, it highlights the difficulty of obtaining a good dispersion in a fibrillar system. Furthermore, the influence of online drawing on the fibril alignment and mechanical properties is investigated. When the property space is spanned and understood, it is possible to design a suitable process, with respect to volume, energy consumption, etc. to meet the desired filament properties.

Effect of particle dispersion on mechanical properties of filaments made of cellulose nanofibrils

255th National Meeting (2018)

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