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Effect of cellulose nanofiber dimensions on sheet forming through filtration

journal contribution
posted on 2012-01-01, 00:00 authored by Liyuan Zhang, W Batchelor, S Varanasi, Takuya Tsuzuki, Xungai Wang
Four different cellulose nanofibers samples were prepared from northern bleached softwood kraft fibers. Fiber diameter distributions were measured from SEM images. Fiber aspect ratios ranging from 84 to 146 were estimated from fiber suspension sedimentation measurements. Three samples had heterogeneous distributions of fiber diameters, while one sample was more homogeneous. Sheet forming experiments using filters with pores ranging from 150 to 5 μm showed that the samples with a heterogeneous distribution of fiber dimensions could be easily formed into sheets at 0. 2% initial solids concentration with all filter openings. On the other hand, sheets could only be formed from the homogenous sample by using 0. 5% or more initial solids content and a lower applied vacuum and smaller filter openings. The forming data and estimated aspect ratios show reasonable agreement with the predictions of the crowding number and percolation theories for the connectivity and rigidity thresholds for fiber suspensions.

History

Journal

Cellulose

Volume

19

Issue

2

Pagination

561 - 574

Publisher

Springer

Location

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

ISSN

0969-0239

eISSN

1572-882X

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2011, Springer