Construction and properties of cellulose diacetate film derived from waste cigarette filters

The cellulose diacetate films derived from the commercial cellulose acetate or some biomass materials have a high cost and the synthesis is complex. It is meaningful to develop a green and low-cost method to prepare cellulose diacetate films and regulate their properties. In addition, it is necessary to recycle the wastes for reuse. Thus, waste cigarette filters were used as the source for preparing the cellulose diacetate films and glycerol as the plasticizer to improve the comprehensive properties in this paper. Hydrogen bonds were formed between glycerol and acetate fibers, and the glass transition temperature of samples decreased after adding glycerol. Moreover, the water contact angle decreased from 97.6° to 19.2° and the water vapor permeability increased from 1.585 × 10⁻¹² to 7.797 × 10⁻¹² with the increasing of glycerol content, demonstrating that the hydrophilic property of as-prepared films was improved. However, excessive content of glycerol decreased the mechanical properties of films. When the content of glycerol was 30%, as-prepared film with an elongation at break of 24% had the highest tensile strength of 24.3 MPa. When the content of glycerol exceeded 30%, the tensile strength declined sharply. Therefore, this paper proposed a simple and low-cost method to convert waste cigarette filters into cellulose diacetate films which can be applied in the packaging or engineering films.