A New Process for Energy-Efficient Dewatering Methods for Cellulosic Nanomaterials

Although cellulosic nanomaterials have shown the potential for advancing a multitude of bio-based products, the production and dewatering of these materials is a costly, energy-intensive, multi-step process. Cellulose nanofibrils and nanocrystals are extremely hydrophilic; combined with their high surface area this makes dewatering the gel-like suspensions of these nanomaterials very difficult. TDA Research proposes to develop a new separation process that can reduce the cost and energy requirements of producing cellulosic nanomaterials. The key to our process is a new separator that can combine multiple unit operations of the current manufacturing process into a single step to carry out bulk dewatering of the cellulosic nanomaterial suspensions. The process intensification by combining separate unit operations such as defibrillation and multi-step dewatering into a single piece of equipment increases the energy efficiency and reduces the capital costs. In Phase I, we will design and fabricate a bench-scale system to demonstrate the key aspects of the new separation concept. We will extensively characterize the recovered products, assessing their physical properties and chemical characteristics to ensure that the proposed dewatering process does not alter their useful material properties. We will extensively use computational fluid dynamics simulations in the experimental effort and to aid the preliminary design of a commercial system. We will estimate system cost and the cost of the overall process.