<br/>Valorization of the multi-billion-ton lignocellulosic agricultural waste stream is one of the grand challenges in sustainability science.  The petrochemical and energy-generation industry also produce vast quantities (~7 Mt/y) of waste sulfur extracted from the refining of fossil fuels. By functionalizing cellulosic materials and taking advantage of sulfur’s ability to form diradicals at elevated temperatures, crosslinked polymers can be achieved. The nature and degree of crosslinking dictates the properties of the resultant polymers, facilitating optimization for numerous applications. Principally, the cellulose component is hypothesized to provide the mechanical strength of the composites, while sulfur provides potential for insect-resistance, insulation and recyclability of the hybrid sulfur-cellulose composite materials. This property profile makes the sulfur-cellulose composites excellent candidates for building materials.  This contribution discusses efforts to prepare and test sulfur-cellulose composites for block and paving technologies. Achieving market penetration in these areas would not only make use of enormous waste streams but potentially could alleviate the prevailing reliance on energy-intensive mining and processing for infrastructure.  Composite materials have been synthesized and analyzed for their response to various thermomechanical stressors via dynamic mechanical analysis.<br/>

Sulfur-cellulose composite preparation and thermomechanical analysis

256th National Meeting (2018)

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