Development of cellulose based hydrogel: An integrated gradient boosting approach for process optimization
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Development of renewable, bio-based, sustainable materials for replacing petroleum derived products is the urgent necessity at present. Cellulose based hydrogel (CHG) was developed from agro based pulp using different polycarboxylic acids viz. citric acid (CA), succinic acid (SA) and malic acid (MA) as non-toxic and green crosslinkers and crosslinking reaction conditions were optimized. The study reported maximum swelling at 1% crosslinker concentration and 75°C reaction temperature for citric acid crosslinked hydrogel and at 1% and 90°C for both succinic acid and malic acid crosslinked hydrogels. Among all, the maximum swelling degree (1102±4.58%) was recorded for citric acid crosslinked hydrogels while succinic and malic acid crosslinked hydrogels exhibited the peak swelling degrees at 820±2.65% and 956±3.61% respectively. The rheological study reported non-newtonian behaviour of all the three CHGs with citric acid crosslinked hydrogels consistently exhibiting higher viscosity (2.24 Pa⋅s) in comparison to succinic (0.192 Pa⋅s) and malic acid (0.213 Pa⋅s) crosslinked hydrogels. The hydrogels were characterized through FTIR, XRD, TGA, FESEM and BET surface area analysis. The statistical analysis further confirmed the robustness and predictive analysis of gradient boosting model. Conclusively, CHGs having excellent swelling ability were successfully synthesized from agro-residue pulp having significant translational potential across emerging next-generation application domains.
Institutions: Forest Research Institute, University of Delhi
Language: English
Subfield: Biomaterials
Field: Materials Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $760
OpenAlex ID: W7172530516