Butanol-mediated oven-drying of nanocellulose with enhanced dehydration rate and aqueous re-dispersion

The application potential of nanocellulose has been previously hindered by the costly and slow drying methods that this material requires, including freeze/supercritical drying process. The main issue for nanocellulose commercialization is how effectively and rapidly its high water contents (90–99%) can be removed, all of which raise its transportation and processing costs. Oven-drying is the fastest, most economical, and most scalable method for dehydrating nanocellulose, but causes strong interfibrillar aggregation and leads to poor aqueous re-dispersion. Here, we report that the problems of nanocellulose oven-drying are comprehensively overcome by adding tert-butanol (t-BuOH) to the nanocellulose solution at >90%. In a lab-scale comparison, the t-BuOH-mediated oven-drying of aqueous nanocellulose showed lower drying times by a factor of 2–12 compared to water only oven-drying and freeze drying of the same material. The dispersibility of this dried nanocellulose is as high as the never-dried material in terms of particle size, light transmittance, and sedimentation. t-BuOH reduces interfibrillar shrinkage due to the lower surface tension of t-BuOH compared to water, and a remaining t-BuOH/water mixture decreases interfibrillar adhesion and contact.