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Optimization of the solvent exchange process in the ionic liquid based generation of mesoporous cellulosic materials | Poster Board #805

Date
March 27, 2023

As the most inexhaustible natural resource on Earth, cellulose is ubiquitous in everyday life due to its many desirable characteristics including superior mechanical properties, nontoxicity, and biodegradability. Natural Fiber Welding (NFW) is an ionic liquid based up-processing technique which fuses cellulosic threads into a robust amorphous network. Recent work has shown that the solvent exchange process used to remove the ionic liquid during fiber welding is the key step in the formation of the ultimate cellulosic material surface structure, and under certain conditions very high surface area mesoporous materials can be produced. However, the current solvent exchange procedures used to obtain mesoporous materials are time-intensive and require significant quantities of solvents. The solvent exchange process consists of an initial water rinse to remove the ionic liquid from the cellulosic substrate; this is followed by exchange of the water with a series of decreasing polarity solvents and a final drying step. In the present study, we present efforts to reduce the time and solvents required to manufacture fiber-welded mesoporous cellulosic materials. Ionic conductivity measurements were used to assess the effectiveness of variations in the initial water rinse procedure, and BET surface area measurements were used to assess the impacts of procedures on the mesoporosity of resulting materials. Optimization resulted in the reduction in time for the water rinse from >24 h to <2 h and reduction in the following solvent exchanges from 3 days to <1 h (a ~97% decrease in processing time!) without negatively impacting product mesoporosity. In addition, we will also present our efforts to replace the sequential solvent exchange process with a continuous flow-through method in an effort to streamline the process of making NFW mesoporous cellulose.

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