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Cellulose liquefaction in acidified ethylene glycol

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Abstract

Wood pulp cellulose was used in a study of its catalyzed liquefaction in the presence of ethylene glycol, p-toluene sulfonic acid monohydrate or sulphuric acid being the catalysts. For this study, microcrystalline cellulose, Whatman filter paper no. 1 and cotton linters with molar masses of 76,000, 699,000 and 1,910,000 g mol−1, respectively were used. This liquefaction was studied by gravimetric determinations, by X-ray diffraction analysis of the residual cellulose and by monitoring of the molar mass decrease over different time intervals, using size-exclusion chromatography. The disordered regions, even of cellulose with the highest molar mass degraded in the initial minute of liquefaction. However, the highly ordered cellulose regions remained relatively stable for a longer time. None the less, partial degradation of the highly ordered regions of the cellulose was achieved.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support of the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology of the Republic of Slovenia and Slovenian Research Agency (programme P2-0145).

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Correspondence to Edita Jasiukaitytė.

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Jasiukaitytė, E., Kunaver, M. & Strlič, M. Cellulose liquefaction in acidified ethylene glycol. Cellulose 16, 393–405 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-009-9288-y

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