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Controllable Synthesis and Rheological Characterization of Hydroxypropyl Methyl Cellulose

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Abstract

Hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose (HPMC) with controllable viscosity average molecular mass (Mη) and degree of substitution had been successfully synthesized in this article. α-cellulose was firstly methylated to be methyl cellulose (MC) by dimethyl sulphate (DMS). Then MC was hydroxypropylated to be HPMC by propylene oxide (PO). In this way, the end capping structure that methoxy group connected to terminal hydroxyl group of hydroxypropyl had been avoided. FT-IR,1H NMR and 13C NMR showed the successful synthesis of products with expected structure. The dilute hydrochloric acid was used to degrade HPMC to obtain a range of products with different Mη measured by ubbelohde viscometer. The rheological properties of HPMC solution with different molecular mass and concentrations were studied, including flow behavior index, thixotropy, entanglement concentration (C**), gelation temperature (Tgel), degelation temperature (Tsol). The results showed that the flow behavior index of HPMC solutions decreased with the increase of molecular mass and concentration, and gradually changed from Newtonian fluid to pseudoplastic fluid. In this article, Tgel and Tsol of HPMC both increased with the increase of molecular mass. When wt = 14%, Mη = 140 kDa, the maximum Tgel and Tsol was separately up to 70.18 °C and 46.81 °C. The effect of concentration on Tgel and Tsol was not noticeable. Tgel changed within 60 ± 2 °C and Tsol decreased from 40.56 °C to 35.72 °C as the concentration increased from 14 to 20%. These rheological studies are expected to provide data for subsequent processing and molding of HPMC capsules.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Life Sciences, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Kai Yuan, YuTing Zhao, QunZhi Hu, MengJie Liu, Dan Li & Hua Zheng

  2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Hua Zheng

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  1. Kai Yuan
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  2. YuTing Zhao
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  3. QunZhi Hu
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  5. Dan Li
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Contributions

KY: wrote the main manuscript text, designed and performed the experiments. YTZ and MJL: reviewed and edited the text. QZH: edited pictures of writing-original draft. DL: Writing—review & editing, supervision, methodology, validation. HZ: Resources, review, project administration, funding acquisition. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Dan Li.

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Yuan, K., Zhao, Y., Hu, Q. et al. Controllable Synthesis and Rheological Characterization of Hydroxypropyl Methyl Cellulose. J Polym Environ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10924-024-03293-7

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