Cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) has attracted a remarkable level of attention as a potential functional nanomaterial for various applications due to the exceptional mechanical properties, ease of modified surface functionality, low density in addition to their abundance and renewable resources. This study is aimed to isolate CNC from abundantly available oil palm empty fruit bunches (OPEFB) which consists of a complete series of pretreatment, purification and isolation of the pretreated cellulose. In this study, cellulose was firstly isolated from OPEFB using alkaline and bleached with NaClO2 to obtain highly content of cellulose. The bleached cellulose was then hydrolysed using sulfuric acid 97% with solid/liquid ratio of 1:80 at 50 °C for 3.5 hours to get CNC. The morphology of the CNC was characterized using TEM. Rod-like CNC was successfully derived from this study with diameter and length dimension of 43 ± 8 nm and 147 ± 23 nm. Analysis from TEM-SAED revealed that the CNC formed single crystalline with crystallinity index of 96%.
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