Abstract—Water hyacinth, a free-floating aquatic weed
originating from South America has become a major floating
weed of tropical and subtropical regions of the world. The plant
has the tendency to regenerate from seeds and fragment
allowing rapid increase in plant population. Water hyacinth is
however a fiber that is rich in its cellulosic compounds, which
can be derivated into somewhat multifunctional properties.
Carboxymethyl Cellulose (CMC) is a derivated cellulose that is
used in food products as a thickener agent or non-food products
such as detergents, paints, and others. The research has
investigated further on how one would synthesize CMC from
water hyacinth as well examining the characterization of the
CMC samples that is originated from the plant. The production
of CMC involves four main processes: the isolation of
alpha-cellulose from the water hyacinth and the synthesis by the
alkali-catalyzed reaction (alkalization) of cellulose with
chloroacetic acid (carboxymethylation) and finally the
purification of the CMC itself to remove undesirable
compounds. In this research, the variations are comprised of
the NaOH added (5 M - 35 M) during alkalization and the ratio
of the solvent between isobutanol and ethanol (ratio 80:20,
50:50 and 20:80) thus fifteen samples are obtained. The
characterization is based on two testing methods: FTIR and
Degree of Substitution (DS). During FTIR test, it is proven that
CMC is produced in the experiment. This is verified from the
spectrum transmitting 1400 cm-1 1600 cm-1 indicating ether
and carboxyl functional group consecutively. On the other hand,
the highest DS is obtained in sample CMC-28-10 with a value of
1.76 with the highest purity of 93.24.
Index Terms—Carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC), water
hyacinth, ethanol, isobutyl alcohol
The authors are with the Department of Chemical Engineering,
Universitas Indonesia, Depok 16424, Indonesia (e-mail: sasep@che.ui.ac.id,
linnisajuniarto@gmail.com, alia.baehaqi@gmail.com ).
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Cite: Asep Handaya Saputra, Linnisa Qadhayna, and Alia Badra Pitaloka, "Synthesis and Characterization of Carboxymethyl
Cellulose (CMC) from Water Hyacinth Using
Ethanol-Isobutyl Alcohol Mixture as the Solvents," International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 36-40, 2014.
