Surface treatment of cellulose ethers Ytmodifiering av cellulosaetrar

Abstract: The aim of this diploma work was to execute surface treatment of non-ionic cellulose ethers EHEC that AkzoNobel provides under the tradename Bermocoll®. In order for the cellulose ether to dissolve without forming lumps, some surface treatment is commonly required. In this work glyoxal has been used for this surface modification using two different lab-scale methods that in different ways mimic the full scale production. It is an everlasting challenge for the chemical industry to reduce the consumption of chemicals and also reduce energy consumption in the production. Therefore one objective of this work was to gain fundamental understanding about the glyoxal reaction with EHEC in terms of required equivalents glyoxal, reaction temperature and reaction time. Another aim of this work was to compare the two lab scale methods with regards to their predictivity and reproducibility of results.One method is called the dry method in which a water solution of glyoxal was added to dry, non-glyoxal treated EHEC at varying temperature during heavy agitation. The second method is called the acetone method where the EHEC and glyoxal were first suspended in acetone at room temperature, and then heated at different temperature for various time periods. The parameters in the experiments made was chosen using a design of experiments (DoE) approach in order to gain as much information as possible from a few experiments and also facilitating a statistical analysis of the results.This diploma work indicates that the acetone method have a better reproducibility and would be the better choice when investigating various parameters for the reaction. On the other hand the dry method might be better suited for the further analysis of temperature dependence of the glyoxal reaction with cellulose ethers. The most important factor for the reaction was the amount of glyoxal used, whereas it is indicated that the reaction temperature had a minor effect on the reaction yields.