Interfacial and rheological properties of enzymatically treated cellulose solutions

Abstract : Cellulose is the most abundant natural raw material on the earth. It can be applied to make various industrial products. However, the dissolution of cellulose is very hard to handle due to its strong fibrillar structure, which restricts its dissolution into a few solvents without chemical changes. Currently, most of the regenerated cellulosic materials are manufactured by the viscose process which has many shortcomings related to environmental issues. More recently, many efforts towards development of new solvent systems such as ionic liquids (ILs) or NaOH have been taken. In this work we investigate the interfacial and rheological properties of cellulose solutions prepared by enzymatic treatment prior to dissolution in NaOH. We compare the results with cellulose xanthate, cellulose-NaOH and cellulose-ILs systems. The advantages and drawbacks of enzymatically treated cellulose solution for various technological applications are also critically discussed.