Viscometric Studies in Dilute Solution Mixtures of Chitosan and Microcrystalline Chitosan with Poly(vinyl alcohol)

Katarzyna Lewandowska

doi:10.1007/s10953-013-0053-3

Abstract

The viscosity behavior of aqueous mixtures formed by a polyelectrolyte (A) and a neutral polymer (B), such as chitosan/poly(vinyl alcohol) (Ch/PVA) and microcrystalline chitosan/poly(vinyl alcohol) (MCCh/PVA), have been investigated at 25 °C. The intrinsic viscosity and the viscosity interaction parameter of each polymer in 0.1 mol·dm−3 CH3COOH/0.2 mol·dm−3 NaCl solution as well as the ternary systems (polymer A/polymer B/solvent) have been determined and have served for estimation of the miscibility of different polymer mixtures by means of the method of classical dilution. By comparing the experimental and ideal viscosity data it is clearly seen that the satisfaction of the miscibility criterion depends on the definition of the ideal parameter b_{text{m}}^{text{id}} . If the b_{text{m}}^{text{id}} parameter is defined according to the Krigbaum–Wall criterion and Garcia criterion, the investigated blends of Ch/PVA satisfy the miscibility criterion. In the case of MCCh/PVA blends, the polymeric components show poor miscibility. Additionally, the viscosity results show that the degree of miscibility depends on the molecular weight of chitosan and on the degree of PVA hydrolysis.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10953-013-0053-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Highlights

The physico-chemical properties of high molecular weight compounds can be modified by various methods, one of them is simple blending with other macromolecular compounds, Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.J Solution Chem (2013) 42:1654–1662 which assures the required useful behavior in manufacturing and applications
The aim of this study is to evaluate the miscibility of Ch with poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and Microcrystalline chitosan (MCCh) with PVA on the basis of experimental and ideal values of the viscosity interaction parameters: bm and [g]m, which were calculated from viscosity measurements of dilute solutions
The plots of gsp/c versus c for chitosan/poly(vinyl alcohol) (Ch/PVA) and MCCh/PVA blends lies between the plots for the starting polymers

Summary

Introduction

The physico-chemical properties of high molecular weight compounds can be modified by various methods, one of them is simple blending with other macromolecular compounds, Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10953-013-0053-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.J Solution Chem (2013) 42:1654–1662 which assures the required useful behavior in manufacturing and applications. A previous study [7] showed that the thermal properties of films produced by blending Ch and PVA depend on the degree of hydrolysis of PVA and on the molecular weight of Ch. To my knowledge the physico-chemical properties of MCCh with PVA mixtures have not been investigated before. One of the procedures used for the estimation of miscibility in dilute solution is the determination of viscosity interaction parameters for mixtures of polymers in different proportions. This method is often used because of its simplicity and low cost [8,9,10,11,12,13]

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