Rheological behavior of liquefied α-cellulose with phenol

Abstract

The steady rheological behavior of phenol-liquefied cellulose product (LCP) at varying liquefaction times was investigated at three testing temperatures. The LCP presented interesting rheological behavior. When liquefaction time was longer than 45 min, the LCP showed stronger shear-thinning behavior with increasing temperature, and the viscosity at high testing temperature was higher than that at low testing temperature at low shear rates. An experiment with a heating and cooling cycle indicated that LCP would form reversible association structures when temperature increased. The mechanism of the reversed rheological behavior of LCP may be attributed to the association of alkyl chain parts of liquefied cellulose when heating.

Keywords:

• α-cellulose
• phenol liquefaction
• rheological behavior
• shear thinning
• reversible association

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the financial support from the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province of China (LQ12C16003) and the Pre-research Project of Research Center of Biomass Resource Utilization, ZAFU (2013SWZ02-2).