ORIGINAL PAPER Agriculture crop residues as a source for the production of nanofibrillated cellulose with low energy demand Ashraf Chaker • Pere Mutje ´ • Manuel Rei Vilar • Sami Boufi Received: 8 June 2014 / Accepted: 16 September 2014 / Published online: 14 October 2014 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014 Abstract Nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC) from three agricultural crop (rice straw, corn and rapeseed stalk) residues was isolated with high-yield production using either high pressure homogenisation or a high speed blender. The fibres were extracted from the neat biomass via an NaClO 2 /acetic acid and alkali pulping process. TEMPO-mediated oxidation pretreatment at pH 7 and 10 was accomplished to facilitate the release of the cellulose microfibrils. The fibrillation yield, transparency degree and morphological characteristics of the ensuing NFC were analysed using the centri- fugation method, transmittance measurement and SEM observation. The energy consumption during the disintegration process was also accessed. It was shown that the mode of lignin removal and the fibre pretreatment notably affected the nanofibrillation efficiency and energy demand. A successful produc- tion of NFC with yield exceeding 90 %, using a simple Waring blender, was achieved when the NaClO 2 / acetic acid delignification followed by a TEMPO- NaBr–NaClO oxidation at pH 10 was adopted. Keywords Nanofibrillated cellulose  Homogenisation  Agricultural crops  Rice  Rapeseed  Corn stalk Abbreviations D1 NaOH delignification D2 NaClO 2 delignification O1 TEMPO-mediated oxidation with NaClO 2 at pH 7 O2 TEMPO-mediated oxidation with NaClO at pH 10 HPH Disintegration using a pressure homogeniser (10 passes at 600 bar) WB Disintegration using a Waring blender for 20 min Introduction In the past decade, one could witness an increasing interest in the extraction of nanosized cellulose fibrils, commonly named nanocellulose, from a wide range of vegetal resources (Klemm et al. 2011; Brinchi et al. 2013). These bio-nanomaterials combine the advan- tageous properties of cellulose, namely the broad range of chemical modifications, renewability and sustainability, with the specific attributes of nanosized materials, which in turn expanded the spectrum of potential applications. These features make nanosized A. Chaker  S. Boufi (&) University of Sfax, Faculty of Science, BP 1171-3000, Sfax, Tunisia e-mail: sami.boufi@fss.rnu.tn P. Mutje ´ Group LEPAMAP, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Girona, Girona, Spain M. R. Vilar ITODYS, UMR7086 CNRS, Universite ´ Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cite ´, Paris, France 123 Cellulose (2014) 21:4247–4259 DOI 10.1007/s10570-014-0454-5