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Complete nanofibrillation of cellulose prepared by phosphorylation

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Abstract

In this work, we prepared phosphorylated pulp with a phosphorous content of 1.23 mmol/g by adding an aqueous solution of NH4H2PO4 and urea to softwood pulp sheets followed by drying and curing with hot air and obtained cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) with a uniform width of 3–4 nm in approximately 100% gravimetric yield by high-pressure homogenization of the phosphorylated pulp slurry. After phosphorylation, no significant decrease in the pulp recovery ratio was observed, and the viscosity-average degree of polymerization of phosphorylated pulp was almost equal to that of the original pulp. In addition, the crystal structure and crystallinity index were almost unchanged during phosphorylation. The obtained phosphorylated CNF dispersion was highly transparent, and the maximum total light transmittance was nearly 100% when the CNF content was 0.2 wt%. The maximum viscosity of the CNF dispersions was nearly 10–100 times greater than that of conventional thickeners. Furthermore, we found that not only insufficient but also excessive phosphorylation negatively affected the gravimetric yield, transparency and viscosity.

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Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank Prof. Akira Isogai for insightful comments and Mengchen Zhao for performing transmission electron microscopy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pulp and Paper Innovation Center, Innovation Promotion Division, Oji Holdings Corporation, 1-10-6 Shinonome, Koto-ku, Tokyo, 135-8558, Japan

    Yuichi Noguchi, Ikue Homma & Yusuke Matsubara

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  1. Yuichi Noguchi
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  2. Ikue Homma
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  3. Yusuke Matsubara
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Correspondence to Yuichi Noguchi.

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Noguchi, Y., Homma, I. & Matsubara, Y. Complete nanofibrillation of cellulose prepared by phosphorylation. Cellulose 24, 1295–1305 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-017-1191-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-017-1191-3

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