Sawdust collected from a local wood processor of Sapele Mahogany wood specie was further milled and reduced in size to 100 850 m. Kraft process was used in digesting the sawdust at 80 110°C and 1 atm., so as to isolate the -cellulose. The recovered powdered cellulose was regenerated and hydrolyzed to yield an -cellulose powder of 96% w/w. Preliminary physico-chemical property tests of the different cellulose samples were carried out. Properties considered in these tests were appearance, average particle size, density, porosity, moisture sorption capacity, loss on drying, degree of polymerization and crystallinity (or isotacticity) index. Also, verified was the structure of cellulose samples using the FT-IR test. The results obtained showed that the properties of sample C (hydrolyzed-regenerated -cellulose powder) corroborated closely with literature values of microcrystalline cellulose powder grade 101.
