Abstract

Natural fibres have been attracted significant interest due to its renewable nature, its vast source of raw material, besides having good mechanical properties and low cost. The cellulose present in cell walls of plants can be purified and isolated, acting as a reinforcing agent in polymer composites, in order to obtain lighter, resistant and biodegradable composites. The techniques of acid hydrolysis are methods used to isolate crystals of cellulose, using different acids, resulting in different materials. In this study it was possible to verify the effect of the acid hydrolysis process, with hydrochloric acid (HCl) and sulfuric acid (H2SO4), resulting in MCC and NCC by one hydrolysis step, and then were analysed for its chemical and morphological characteristics, presenting significant improvements on these properties.