A fully aqueous grafting-through polymerization approach was employed to apply various polymeric surface modifications to bleached softwood kraft pulp (BSKP). Several hydrophobic and hydrophilic polymers were chemically attached to the BSKP fiber surface and confirmed by attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR). The samples were fibrillated and evaluated using optical fiber length analysis and scanning electron microscopy analysis. Furthermore, the effect of the polymeric surface modifications before and after fibrillation on the water retention value was studied and showed a significantly reduced WRV after fibrillation. Modified pulp composites with poly(acrylamide) (PAM) and poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) were scaled up to a pilot scale of 100L to measure the fibrillation energy needed to produce modified cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) using a super mass collider. The polymeric surface modifications had a significant energy reduction in fibrillation compared with the unmodified pulp. The samples were dried and applied as a filler in polylactic acid (PLA) based matrix to enhance the tensile strength.

Fibrillated bleached softwood kraft pulp modified via grafting-through polymerization

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