Preparation, Properties, and Applications of Natural Cellulosic Aerogels: A Review

Abstract

With the depletion of fossil fuel and increasing environmental concerns, the modernized era of technology is urgently in need for sustainable and eco-friendly materials. The industrial sector certainly possesses enough resources for the production of available cost-effective, renewable, reusable, and sustainable raw materials. Ultralight, eco-friendly and renewable cellulosic aerogels are one of the most accentuated materials in the polymer research field due to their highly abundant and inexpensive raw material, biocompatibility, high specific surface area and other feasible properties. This review summarizes the recent progress in cellulosic aerogels, their main processing route, including a detailed description of versatile new solvents along with some essential properties of cellulosic aerogels and illustrate how their variety of chemical functionalities can be adjusted for applications in the fields of thermal insulation, fire retardant, antibacterial, CO2 capture and energy storage systems. A detailed morphological analysis has been elaborated and effect of processing route, solvent medium and drying procedure on the morphology of cellulosic aerogels is also decribed. Finally, we propose some suggestions to the functionalization such as silanized cellulosic aerogels and their applications in antibacterial activity yet they are still in progress and need further study for future research.

Keywords

• Cellulose aerogel
• Lignocellulose
• Cellulose solvents
• Functionalized cellulose
• Microstructure-related properties