Abstract
This paper reports on a headspace gas chromatography method (HS-GC) for efficient determination of carboxyl groups in nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC). By pretreating the NFC suspension with a strong acid cation exchange resin for 30 min, the carboxyl groups in NFC were converted to the carboxyl acids. The pretreated suspension was added into a closed headspace sample vial containing bicarbonate solution. By HS-GC measuring the CO2 produced from the reaction between carboxyl acids and bicarbonate (10 min at 60 °C), the content of carboxyl groups in NFC can be determined. The results showed that the relative standard deviation of the method in the repeatability testing was < 3.7% and the limit of quantitation was about 0.1 mmol/g. Relative differences between the HS-GC and the reference (a conductometric titration) method were within 15.0%. The present method is simple and efficient, and suitable to be used for determining the content of carboxyl groups in NFC in the related applications.
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The authors acknowledge the financial support from the Key Project of the Science and Technology Ministry of Guangzhou, China (Grant No. 201607020025) the Natural Science Foundation of China (Project Nos. 21576105 and 51409287).
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Wu, N., Wan, X., Liu, B. et al. A simple and efficient headspace gas chromatographic method for the determination of carboxyl groups in nanofibrillated cellulose. Cellulose 25, 953–959 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-017-1614-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-017-1614-1