Characterization of cellulose biomass for use as an excipient in pharmaceutical field

Every day the industry of paper and cellulose discards large amounts of waste. An alternative to reuse this kind of biomass is to transform part of it in cellulose nanocrystals and nanofibrils to be used as excipients in pharmaceutical field. Thus, cellulose fibrils were obtained in nanoscale using mill and fibrils' characterization study were performed by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, thermal analysis, differential scanning calorimetry, infrared Fourier transform and X-rays diffraction. Hence, the methodology used to obtain and characterize nanocellulose was effective and the fibers/fibrils lengths are in nanometer dimension with high potential to apply in the pharmaceutical field. (author)