Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

In recent years, falling demand for Canadian pulp fibres has led to extensive research and development into new high-value products derived from traditional pulp resources. These products include technical celluloses such as nanocrystalline and nanofibrilated cellulose. These materials have high-value applications in a number of non-traditional markets, including as reinforcing material in fibre-plastic composites, as rheology modifiers in paints, cosmetics, and industrial fluids, and as strength reinforcing agents in concrete. Current challenges to the cost-effective production of these materials include the high energy requirements of refining, the heterogeneity of the material after refining, and difficulties associated with incorporating these materials into the final products (such as surface modification and compounding challenges when incorporating the cellulose into plastic composites). Previous work into reducing refining energy and product heterogeneity successfully used a number of classical cellulase enzymes in a pretreatment step prior to refining. However in the years since this work was performed several new enzyme families have been identified which specifically promote fibrillation and 'amorphogenesis' of cellulosic fibers. In the project proposed here, these new enzyme families will be assessed for their ability to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the mechanical refining process. Additionally, the ability of these enzymes to enhance the susceptibility of the cellulose to surface modification will be assessed, using a number of tailor-made surface modification polymers. Finally, the refined products will be compounded into plastics to assess how the properties of the fibrillated celluloses affect the mechanical properties of the final composite materials. Overall, this project aims to improve the efficiency, quality and suitability of highly refined cellulosic materials for high-tech applications. The ability to cost-effectively produce these new fibrillated cellulosic materials will enable the Canadian pulp and paper sector to diversify its product streams and enter into new, non-traditional, high-value markets, providing a promising path to revitalizing this key industrial sector.*