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Title
Swelling and dissolution of cellulose in NaOH aqueous solvent systems
Authors
SHUAI ZHANG WEN-CONG WANG FA-XUE LI and JIAN-YONG YU
Received
October 5, 2012
Published
Volume 47 Issue 9-10 October-December
Keywords
cellulose, swelling, dissolution, NaOH, urea, thiourea
Abstract
As a fundamental step towards creating a new class of cellulose engineering materials, the proposed research
investigated swelling and dissolution of cellulose in NaOH aqueous solvent systems (NaOH/H2O, NaOH/thiourea/H2O
and NaOH/thiourea/urea/H2O). The dependence of swelling and dissolution behavior of cellulose fibers on the quality
of the solvent was investigated in detail. For the two cellulose samples – cotton linter and spruce wood fibers – the
swelling and dissolution mechanisms in NaOH-water and NaOH-water-additives stayed the same. Adding thiourea to
NaOH-water produced the same ballooning mechanism, but with a larger expansion of the balloons, indicating a better
solvent. The cotton fiber could not completely dissolve in NaOH/H2O and NaOH/thiourea/H2O. However, the cotton
fiber swelled evidently showing no balloon formation and then disintegrated into rod-like fragments in
NaOH/thiourea/urea/H2O, which was an indication of the best solvent of all the NaOH aqueous solutions used.
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