In this study, cellulose nanocrystals with cellulose crystal structure I (CNCs I) and with coexisting cellulose crystalline structures I and II (CNCs I-II) were isolated from pine cellulose using acid hydrolysis with H 2 SO 4 . It was possible to obtain CNCs with different morphologies, crystallinities and crystalline structures adjusting only the reaction conditions. The thermal stability is directly related to the crystalline structure and the crystallinity. It was observed that CNCs composed mainly of CNC II have an initial degradation temperature higher than the CNCs I when comparing samples with similar crystallinity. The kinetic results allow us to conclude that activation energy (E a ) not only depends on the crystalline structure and crystallinity of the CNCs but may also be related to the presence of sulfate groups. Understanding the influence of crystallinity and crystalline structure on the thermal stability of CNCs can direct the studies of future applications for these materials.

This study provides a novel value‐added utilization of the agroindustrial waste of royal palm tree leaf sheath to produce cellulose acetate. One of the motivations of this work was the fact that Brazil is one of the largest heart of palm producers in the world. However, as a result of extraction and processing, tons of waste are generated and discharged to the environment. Such waste is rich in lignocellulosic material, which could be reused to obtain derivatives of interest and commercial value. The synthesis of cellulose acetate was performed through a homogeneous acetylation reaction. Three different conditions were tested for delignification of the raw material, which resulted in a reduction in lignin content from 17.75 to 7.72%. The highest yield of cellulose acetate reached 99.5%, with degree of substitutions ranging between 2.08 and 2.82, which indicates satisfactory conversion. The Fourier transform infrared spectrum showed that practically all hydroxyl groups were replaced by acetate groups; this was also confirmed by nuclear magnetic resonance analysis. X‐ray diffraction analysis showed that the cellulose acetate crystallinity index was 8.9%. This demonstrates the viable potential of cellulose acetate production with low cost and use of highly available agroindustrial waste. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 59:891–898, 2019. © 2018 Society of Plastics Engineers

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The present study addresses the novel application of the simulated annealing algorithm (SAA) to optimize the pressure-swing distillation (PSD) process for anhydrous ethanol purification. Three different softwares (Aspen Plus ® , Excel ® and Matlab ®) were integrated to simultaneously optimize seven design and operational variables. The configuration with the best TAC represented a 40.2% saving per year in comparison to the non-optimized PSD. Such reduction was achieved by using the higher acceptance probability and the slower temperature decrement. This saving is mainly related to operational cost reductions, a fact that evidences the viability of using the herein described optimization methodology to improve the PSD design.