Skip to main content
Customer publications

Cellulose gelation in NaOH solutions is due to cellulose crystallization

Pereira, Ana; Duarte, Hugo; Nosrati, Pegah; Gubitosi, Marta; Gentile, Luigi; Romano, Anabela; Medronho, Bruno; Olsson, Ulf

By March 12th, 2019No Comments

Cellulose, 2018, vol 25, 6, pp. 3205-3210

DOI:10.1007/s10570-018-1794-3

Abstract

Cellulose gelation in 2 M NaOH aqueous solution was followed by time resolved turbidity and rheology measurements. The kinetics of gelation is observed to change from several hours down to few seconds when the temperature is increased from 25 to 30 °C. The increase of turbidity upon gelation demonstrates the formation of larger cellulose aggregates, while wide angle X-ray scattering data confirms the gradual formation of crystalline domains. This suggests that the gelation can be understood as cellulose precipitation/crystallization where an effectively cross linked network and gelation results from that cellulose chains may participate in more than one crystallite.Graphical AbstractThe gelation of cellulose solutions is due to crystallization and precipitation of cellulose. Open image in new window

Visit the full article

Back to the overview