The mechanism of consumption of ceric salt with cellulosic materials

AbstractEfforts were made in the present study to elucidate the mechanism of graft copolymerization of cellulose in the presence of a ceric salt as initiator. When cellulose is treated with an aqueous solution of the ceric salt, ceric ion is consumed in a roughly first‐order reaction in the oxidation of cellulose and in the adsorption on cellulose, and the ratio of the rate constants of oxidation and adsorption is about 1:3 in the case of sulfite pulp. Ceric ion is adsorbed so strongly on cellulose as not to be readily desorbed by treatment with water, dilute acid, or dilute alkali. The number of moles of adsorbed ceric ion was approximately equal to the number of moles of the total carbonyl groups in the cases of cotton and sulfite pulp, which are low in hemicellulose content, and was several times as large in the cases of kraft pulp and semichemical pulp, which contain about 22% hemicellulose. In these samples, however, it was interesting to note that the amount of the adsorbed ceric ion was roughly equal to the amount consumed in oxidation. Cellulose on which ceric ion is adsorbed reacts with methyl methacrylate to yield graft copolymers; a higher molecular weight of grafts, smaller number of grafts, and lower graft efficiency than in a standard polymerization were observed. Since the stability of the adsorbed ceric ion is high, a contribution of the adsorbed ceric ion to the graft copolymerization appears small, and the oxidation reaction, which proceeds slightly more slowly than adsorption, seems more important to the graft copolymerization.