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The yield of cellulose precipitate from sub- and supercritical water treatment of various microcrystalline celluloses

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Abstract

Subcritical and supercritical water are known to dissolve crystalline cellulose, offering a simple way to produce low molar mass cellulose which precipitates at ambient temperatures. However, the yield of precipitate is limited by concomitant degradation reactions. In this study, the formation of cellulose precipitate from six different microcrystalline celluloses (MCC) was investigated in 0.2 s treatments at 250–380 °C. The results were elucidated with a simple two-step kinetic model. The maximum yield of cellulose precipitate depended on the choice of starting material, which had a more important role than the optimized treatment time or temperature. Wood-derived MCCs dissolved faster and resulted in a higher yield of precipitate than those prepared from cotton linter. The highest yield of precipitate, 68 %, was recovered from a MCC prepared from mercerized prehydrolysis hardwood Kraft pulp. The high yield of precipitate could not be attributed to any single factor but in general the wood-derived MCCs had a smaller particle size, smaller crystallite dimensions, and lower molar mass than their cotton-derived equivalents. The analysis of molar mass distributions indicated heterogeneous dissolution mechanism at 250 and 320 °C whereas at 380 °C the cellulose crystallites were subjected to random chain cleavage.

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Acknowledgments

Seppo Jääskeläinen, Terho Konttinen, and the workshop are acknowledged for their work with the reactor system. This work was funded by the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovations (TEKES), and Finnish Bioeconomy Cluster Ltd. as a part of the Future Biorefinery Program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forest Products Technology, Aalto University, P.O. Box 16300, 00076, Espoo, Finland

    Lasse K. Tolonen & Herbert Sixta

  2. Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 64, 00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Paavo A. Penttilä & Ritva Serimaa

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  1. Lasse K. Tolonen
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  2. Paavo A. Penttilä
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  3. Ritva Serimaa
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  4. Herbert Sixta
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Correspondence to Lasse K. Tolonen.

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Tolonen, L.K., Penttilä, P.A., Serimaa, R. et al. The yield of cellulose precipitate from sub- and supercritical water treatment of various microcrystalline celluloses. Cellulose 22, 1715–1728 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-015-0628-9

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