No abstract

Natural oils derived from linseed, rapeseed, soybean, and a special breed of sunflower were tested for the production of maleated fatty oils for paper sizing in the ene-reaction with maleic anhydride. All these maleated oils were subjected to a conventional sizing test proving their ability to hydrophobize handsheets. Natural oils having only monounsaturated fatty acid residues (oleic acid) in the triglycerides worked best by having lower product viscosity and higher yields. The optimized production procedure employs antioxidant addition, an increased maleic anhydride:triglyceride ratio of 4:1, as well as increased pressure to reduce undesired polymeric byproducts and to increase yield.

To address the chemical behavior of beech xylan (O-acetyl-4-O-methyl-glucuronoxylan) under alkaline conditions, three model compounds, 2-O-methylxylobiose (1), aldobiouronic acid (4-O-methyl-α-D-glucopyranosyluronic acid-(1→2)-xylose, 2), and aldotriouronic acid (4-Omethyl-α-D-glucopyranosyluronic acid-(1→2)-β-D-xylopyranosyl-(1→4)-D-xylose, 3), were subjected to strong alkaline conditions equal to those used for the industrial production of viscose (18% NaOH, 43°C). Kinetics of the degradation of the model compounds were monitored by capillary electrophoresis in combination with pre-column derivatization. It was demonstrated that substitution at O-2 of the reducing xylose unit strongly retarded the alkaline degradation reactions (1 and 2). By isotopic labeling experiments and isolation of degradation products it was shown that under the pertinent conditions deprotonation at C-2 occurs, followed by epimerization to the respective lyxo derivative. Aldotriouronic acid 3 was degraded to 2 as an intermediate according to classical peeling pathways. Genuine degradation reactions and epimerization processes were distinguished.

No abstract

The binding mechanisms of two reactive sizing agents, alkenyl succinic anhydride (ASA) and maleated sunflower oil high-oleic (MSOHO), with cellulose were studied. While ASA is produced from olefins out of fossil resources, MSOHO is a green sizing agent based on renewable plant materials. In contrast to common assumptions, that ASA is mostly covalently bound to cellulose, this study showed the largest part of ASA to be bound only by physisorption and only a rather small fraction, typically about 0.5 %, to be covalently attached by ester bonds. In the case of MSOHO, the covalent binding was only slightly higher, with about 3 % of the total amount being covalently linked. In both cases, covalently bound sizing agents were found to be almost uniformly distributed over the whole DP range of the cellulose as seen by carboxyl-selective fluorescence labeling in combination with size exclusion chromatography (''FDAM method'').