Comparison of Deep Eutectic Solvents on Pretreatment of Raw Ramie Fibers for Cellulose Nanofibril Production

Deep eutectic solvents (DESs), featured as promising green solvents, were applied to examine their effectiveness in pretreating raw ramie fibers (RFs) for cellulose nanofibril (CNF) production. The pretreatment performance of three DESs, i.e., choline chloride–urea (CU), choline chloride–oxalic acid dihydrate (CO), and choline chloride–glycerol (CG), was evaluated based on chemical composition analysis and structural and morphological changes. CO attained the most dramatic morphological changes of RFs, followed by CG and CU. Its high structural disruption of RFs during the pretreatment process, shown in the results from scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy, could be due to an outstanding ability to remove amorphous cellulose and noncellulosic components from raw RFs, confirmed by the results of chemical composition analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and X-ray diffractometry. Overall, this study provided an innovative and effective pretreatment process for fractionating raw cellulosic fibers, so as to promote the subsequent preparation of CNFs.