Characterization of carboxymethylcellulose: Distribution of substituent groups along the chain

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Abstract
A procedure has been developed for characterizing cellulose ethers on the basis of the distribution of substituent groups along the polymer backbone. This method has been applied to carboxy‐methylcellulose. The technique uses cellulase, a cellulose‐degrading enzyme. Degradation as a function of time is followed by viscosity and reducing sugar measurements. The combination of these data, along with other analytical results, provides information on the number of unsubstituted anhydroglucose residues and the number and average length of blocks of two or more contiguous unsubstituted residues. The results obtained on a series of carboxymethylcellulose samples indicate that the rate of degradation and the number and length of blocks of unsubstituted residues depends not only on the number of substituent groups, but also on other molecular parameters.

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