Obtenção e caracterização de nanopartículas de lignina por spray e precipitação por antisolvente

Abstract

Green-themed research has been appearing more and more in recent years in order to reduce pollution and obtain more sustainable products. Lignin is a material derived from plant biomass that has several applications in composite materials as an anti-UV additive, to increase the curing rate of the resin, helping adhesion, etc. There are several methods for obtaining lignin nanoparticles and the objective of this work is to combine the antisolvent method with spray methods, characterizing the particle size obtained that will be used as UV protection for Polycaprolactone (PCL), which is a biodegradable polymer. An apparatus for the synthesis of nanoparticles was created based on the two combined methods and three ways of drying the particles were tested so that it was possible to define the most efficient drying method. The SEM results showed that there was a formation of particles in addition to agglomerates and using the ImageJ software it was possible to measure the diameter of the particles and observe their distribution, proving the existence of particles with diameters smaller than 100nm. Drying using freeze-drying was the one that had the best results in obtaining particles for use in biodegradable polymer as a natural anti-UV additive, requiring only ultrasonication to reduce the number of agglomerants.