A cellulose-based hydrogel composite with antibacterial activities dressing on wound healing

In this study, an improved approach for the production of hydrogel and its characterization of the hydrogel. The purpose of this research is to extract the cellulose from the corncob waste using the alkaline treatment method. Besides, the prepared cellulose-based hydrogel was incorporated with tannic acid, and the characterization of swelling, tensile strength, and antibacterial properties was performed on the cellulose-based hydrogel. The cellulose was used to form the cellulose-based hydrogel cross-link with the gelatin (GEL). Thus, the extraction of cellulose using 95% ethanol in a liquid pre-treatment, 5% acetic acid was used for the bleaching process to remove lignin, and 5% potassium hydroxide (KOH) was used to treat the cellulose extract from the corncob. Two different percentages of GEL, 40% GEL, and 50% GEL were used to prepare the cellulose-based hydrogel for wound healing. Therefore, to increase the chemical properties of the sample, Fourier transform infrared analysis (FTIR) was used on cellulose powder and cellulose-based hydrogel to identify the chemical reaction that occurred in the sample, and an antibacterial assay was performed using two different strains of bacteria, E. coli and S. aureus, to enhance the used of tannic acid as an antibacterial agent in biofilm with a different spectrum of bacteria. Swelling analysis was used to increase the mechanical properties of cellulose-based hydrogel with different percentages of cross-linker used, and tensile strength was performed to increase the physical properties of cellulose-based hydrogel itself. Thus, the results indicated that 40% of extracted cellulose was successfully produced in 30 g of dried corncob. From the all characterizations of the cellulose-based hydrogel, the cellulose-based hydrogel sample that cross-links with 40% GEL can be correlated to the better properties of swelling and other characterizations show the same properties of each sample.