Development of nanocellulose-based composite derived from wood waste of Azadirachta indica for food packaging application

In the food packaging industry, the developments of environmental friendly materials are still one of the challenging areas and many studies have been conducted on the improvement of mechanical and barrier properties of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) by the incorporation of other polymer. The present study deals with the extraction of cellulose and conversion into nanocellulose (NC) from wood waste of Azadirachta indica and incorporation with polyvinyl alchol (PVA) for food packaging application. The prepared NC was characterized by FT-IR, X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and particle size analyzer. FT-IR spectrum confirmed the removal of lignin and hemicellulose in the sample. The SEM reveals the morphology of NC which is nanometer in size, and from the particle size analyzer, the diameter of the particle was found to be 121 nm by the DLS method. The X-ray diffraction pattern showed the intensity at 2θ = 22.71 with sharp peak, which confirms the NCs are in crystalline form. The characterized NC was impregnated with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and the prepared NC-PVA bionanocomposite film was characterized by FT-IR that confirmed the presence of both functional groups in the film. Then, the improved mechanical properties of tensile strength (N/mm2) and elongation at break (