In this work, an attempt has been made to replace wood as raw material by agricultural waste, apart from that
exploring the possibility of using enzymatic hydrolysis in place of acid hydrolysis for preparation of Nano cellulose
(NC). The morphology of prepared Nano cellulose was observed under polarized microscope and SEM, uniform
distribution of rod shaped, micro and nano sized cellulose fibers were observed. The average size of the NC as
measured in zeta particle size analyzer was 53.94 nm and the average length was 551.4 nm. FTIR analysis confirms
the presence of cellulose group in the extract. The rheological behavior of banana stem powder and NC indicates
decrease in viscosity from 1.7 η to 0.6 η and in degree of polymerization from 323 to 116, respectively. X-ray
diffraction and TGA analysis of both raw banana stem and extracted NC powder shows significant increase in
crystallinity and thermal property.
