Enhancing cellulose dissolution in ionic liquid by solid acid addition

It's challenging to dissolve natural cellulose in most solvents due to its highly ordered crystalline structure. In this paper, we developed an efficient cellulose dissolution system which incorporates solid acid (SA) with 1-butyl-3-methylimidizolium chloride (BmimCl). The results showed that addition of solid acid both Amberlyst (R) 15 and CsxH3-xPW12O40 could significantly enhance cellulose dissolution in BmimCl, which attributed to the synergistic action of free hydrogen proton from SA and chloride anion in BmimCl on hydroxyl groups of cellulose, and DMF as co-solvent also could facilitate cellulose dissolution in SA/BmimCl. In contrast to BmimCl system, the SA/BmimCl system for cellulose dissolution achieves better efficiency at mild treatment conditions and facile recovery of solvents. In addition, characterization of the regenerated celluloses showed that SA/BmimCl is a non-derivatizing solvent for cellulose, which helps achieve complete dissolution on crystalline cellulose. Attributed to its low cost and environmentally friendliness for biomass processing, SA/BmimCl systems is a promising and effective solvent system. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.