Production and characterization of PVA/alginate composite filament with cellulose from oil palm empty fruit bunches

Cellulose is a renewable natural polymer that has abundant availability in the Earth and found in oil palm empty fruit bunches (OPEFBs). OPEFBs is one of the biomass produced from the crude palm oil industry. Cellulose fibers were isolated by alkaline treatment and bleaching. Cellulose from OPEFBs can be utilized as filament material by mixing it with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and alginate. In this work, OPEFBs cellulose/PVA/alginate composite filaments were produced by the wet spinning method with 9 wt% CaCl2 as a coagulant solvent and characterized. The effect of composite formulation on mechanical, morphological, crystallinity, and thermal properties of filaments was observed. The observed result shows that the increasing cellulose concentration had excellent thermal stability, higher crystallinity, with the morphology of the surface became rougher than 0% cellulose filament. The addition of cellulose had a significant effect on the mechanical properties of filaments, increasing the tensile strength and decreasing the elongation of filaments.