Homogenous carboxymethylation of cellulose in the NaOH/urea aqueous solution

In this work, the carboxymethylation of cellulose in the alkaline cellulose solvent, 7 wt% NaOH/12 wt% urea aqueous solution, was investigated. Carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) samples were characterized with FT-IR, NMR, HPLC, and viscosity measurements. Water-soluble CMC with DS = 0.20–0.62 was prepared from both Avicel cellulose and cotton linters. Thus, carboxymethylation of cellulose in NaOH/urea leads to a polymer with the lowest DS value for water solubility (0.20) of CMC known. The total DS of CMC could be controlled by varying the molar ratio of reagents and NaOH to AGU and the reaction temperature. Structure analysis by means of HPLC after complete depolymerization showed that the mole fractions of the different carboxymethylated repeating units as well as those of unmodified glucose follow the simple statistic pattern. A distribution of the carboxymethyl groups at the level of the AGU in the order O-6 > O-2 > O-3 was determined. The results were similar with findings for CMC obtained by totally homogeneous reaction of cellulose in aqueous solvents such as Ni[tris(2-aminoethyl)amine](OH)2.