Cellulose as a renewable resource for the synthesis of wood consolidants

Abstract

Crosslinkable cellulose ethers as allyl cellulose, allyl carboxymethyl cellulose, and allyl n-hydroxypropyl cellulose were synthesized and characterized, and their use as consolidating agents for waterlogged wood was studied. For this kind of application, structural properties similar to those of wood's polysaccharide components are desired in the design stage of new consolidants. The choice to synthesize cellulose ethers was determined from the possibility of using cellulose as the starting material because of its large availability in nature, biocompatibility, and low cost. In addition, cellulose ethers are quite easy to obtain, and they can have different properties, depending on the nature and the amount of the functional groups introduced. For this purpose, a cellulose with a lower degree of polymerization was also used for the synthesis of related cellulose ethers. By means of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, the affinity of the cellulose derivatives for degraded lignin flours was detected. The preliminary results of this study show that these polysaccharide compounds may be proposed as wood consolidating agents.

Homogenous synthesis of 3-allyloxy-2-hydroxypropyl-cellulose in NaOH/urea aqueous system

“…The double bonds may be used for subsequent conversions, including ionic and radical grafting or click chemistry such as thiol-ene reaction (Heinze et al 2008;Breckwoldt and Szablikowski 1994;Bowman and Hoyle 2010;Mustafa et al 2010). Conventionally, allyl derivatives of cellulose were synthesized using allyl halides (Heinze et al 2008;Sakurada 1929;Kondo et al 1987;Sachinvala et al 2000;Lin and Huang 1992;Cipriani et al 2010). As allyl chloride and allyl bromide are insoluble in water, the reactions are usually performed in polar aprotic media, such as dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) (Kondo et al 1987), N,N-dimethylacetamide/LiCl (Sachinvala et al 2000;Lin and Huang 1992;Cipriani et al 2010), and DMSO/tetrabutylammonium fluoride trihydrate (TBAF) (Heinze et al 2008).…”

Cellulose and Lignin Nano-Scale Consolidants for Waterlogged Archaeological Wood

“…Tests with nanosols of silica and alkaline nanoparticles were conducted to consolidate wood artifacts and to deacidify waterlogged archaeological wood (Chelazzi et al, 2006;Mahltig et al, 2008). Even if Cipriani et al (2010) tested cellulose derived consolidants and Christensen et al (2012) report of consolidation attempts made with cellulose whiskers, no additional literature is available about the consolidation of waterlogged archaeological wood with nanomaterials obtained from renewable sources.…”

Natural polymers as alternative consolidants for the preservation of waterlogged archaeological wood

“…In particular, these reports focus on the degradation of PEG to acidic by-products over time, its utility as a solid-state ion transporter (Glastrup et al, 2006a(Glastrup et al, , 2006bMortensen et al, 2007;Mortensen, 2009), and the plasticising effect it can have on already fragile archaeological wood (Bardet et al, 2007). Recent work suggests that polysaccharides and oligoamides are the most suitable alternatives to synthetic treatments such as PEG (Cipriani et al, 2010(Cipriani et al, , 2013Christensen et al, 2012). This is mainly because of their similarity to the wood matrix and/ or the lack of acidic by-products on degradation.…”