Rapid homogeneous esterification of cellulose induced by microwave irradiation

The aim of this work is the esterification of cellulose with long chain acyl chloride in homogeneous media induced by microwave irradiation. The system used was cellulose/lauroyl chloride/N,wN-dimethylacetamide/LiCl and N,N-dimethylaminopyridine as a catalyst. The use of microwave resulted in a dramatic drop in reaction time: 1 min irradiation was sufficient, compared with 30 min to 2 days, when conventional heating is used. We studied the degrees of substitution (DS), weight increase and molar yields in function of lauroyl chloride and N,N-dimethyl-4-aminopyridine amounts. We also determined mechanical and thermal properties of a sample with DS = 2.4 and the biodegradability for samples with DS ranging from 0.7 to 2.6. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.