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Deep eutectic solvent-derived hemp and jute cellulose nanopapers: from nanofibril morphology to nanopaper architecture and polyester microplastic filtration
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Scientists made eco-friendly filter paper from hemp and jute plant fibers that can trap over 90% of tiny plastic fibers shed by synthetic clothes during laundry, the same microplastics that end up in our water, food, and bodies. This matters because washing machines are a major source of microplastic pollution, and this plant-based filter offers a sustainable way to catch these particles before they escape into wastewater, rather than relying on plastic-based filtration materials that add to the problem.
Microplastic fibre pollution from synthetic textile laundering represents a persistent and difficult-to-mitigate environmental challenge. Bio-based filtration materials capable of efficiently capturing fibrous microplastics while minimising environmental burden are therefore urgently needed. In this study, cellulose nanofibril (CNF) nanopapers derived from hemp and jute bast fibres were fabricated using an identical deep eutectic solvent (DES)–assisted shear mixing route and evaluated for polyester microplastic filtration using controlled suspensions prepared from commercial laundry wastewater. Despite identical processing conditions, hemp and jute exhibited distinct nanofibrillation behaviour arising from intrinsic differences in chemical composition. Hemp produced finer nanofibrils (12 ± 6.1 nm) and dense nanopaper networks with higher apparent density, lower porosity and high specific surface area (31.9 m2 g−1), whereas jute yielded coarser nanofibrils (28.9 ± 21.6 nm) and more open nanopaper structures characterised by higher pore volume with a surface area of 4.5 m2 g−1. Chemical and crystalline analyses confirmed preservation of cellulose I crystallinity alongside increased surface disorder and possible esterification during DES processing. Filtration experiments revealed that the number of nanopaper layers overwhelmingly governs filtration efficiency, with both hemp and jute achieving > 90% removal at three layers. Hemp nanopapers exhibited superior efficiency per layer due to their fine, high-surface-area networks, while jute nanopapers achieved comparable performance through multilayer assembly, leveraging their higher pore volume for effective depth filtration. Effect size analysis (partial η2p) quantitatively confirmed the dominance of nanopaper architecture over operating conditions such as flow rate and microplastic concentration. Overall, this work demonstrates that feedstock-dependent nanofibril morphology governs nanopaper structure and filtration behaviour, and that DES-derived bast-fibre nanopapers offer a sustainable platform for fibrous microplastic capture.
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