A sustainable production of Ixora coccinea Linn. derived cellulose phthalate for industrial dye removal from waste water

Cellulose, a widely used, renewable, and biodegradable biopolymer, has vast industrial potential but is limited by its high crystallinity and poor solubility in most solvents. It is well known that ionic liquids can dissolve cellulose and cause it to functionalize with different functional groups, which encourages its use in a variety of applications such as water treatment, energy sensors, and the biomedical industry. Among the other ionic liquids, choline chloride was selected for the current cellulose dissolution experiment and phthalic anhydride is used as the functionalizing agent which converts nanocellulose extracted from I.coccinea L. to cellulose phthalate. The functionalized product is characterized using FT-IR, XRD, FE-SEM, TG/DTA/DSC, BET surface area analysis and zeta potential studies. In back titration, the DS of cellulose phthalate is raised to 0.30. Nanocellulose loses some of its crystallinity during the phthalylation process, indicating that cellulose phthalate has transitioned into an amorphous phase. TG/DTA/DSC experiments indicate that nanocellulose exhibits greater heat stability than cellulose phthalate. The pore radius and surface area of nanocellulose are somewhat increased as a result of the esterification process. According to the zetapotential investigations, the presence of carboxylate functional groups on the surface of nanocellulose produced a greater negative zeta potential value, which increases the material potential applications in the water treatment, biomedical industries etc.