Viscoelasticity and Solution Stability of Cyanoethylcellulose with Different Molecular Weights in Aqueous Solution

Water-soluble cellulose ethers are widely used as stabilizers, thickeners, and viscosity modifiers in many industries. Understanding rheological behavior of the polymers is of great significance to the effective control of their applications. In this work, a series of cyanoethylcellulose (CEC) samples with different molecular weights were prepared with cellulose and acrylonitrile in NaOH/urea aqueous solution under the homogeneous reaction. The rheological properties of water-soluble CECs as a function of concentration and molecular weight were investigated using shear viscosity and dynamic rheological measurements. Viscoelastic behaviors have been successfully described by the Carreau model, the Ostwald-de-Waele equation, and the Cox–Merz rule. The entanglement concentrations were determined to be 0.6, 0.85, and 1.5 wt% for CEC-11, CEC-7, and CEC-3, respectively. All of the solutions exhibited viscous behavior rather than a clear sol-gel transition in all tested concentrations. The heterogeneous nature of CEC in an aqueous solution was determined from the Cox–Merz rule due to the coexistence of single chain complexes and aggregates. In addition, the CEC aqueous solutions showed good thermal and time stability, and the transition with temperature was reversible.