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Dehydration of bacterial cellulose and the water content effects on its viscoelastic and electrochemical properties

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journal contribution
posted on 2018-03-19, 11:42 authored by Ana M. Rodrigues Rebelo, Andrew ArcherAndrew Archer, Xiuli Chen, Changqing Liu, Guang Yang, Yang LiuYang Liu
Bacterial cellulose (BC) has interesting properties including high crystallinity, tensile strength, degree of polymerisation, water holding capacity (98%) and an overall attractive 3D nanofibrillar structure. The mechanical and electrochemical properties can be tailored upon incomplete BC dehydration. Under different water contents (100, 80 and 50%), the rheology and electrochemistry of BC were evaluated, showing a progressive stiffening and increasing resistance with lower capacitance after partial dehydration. BC water loss was mathematically modelled for predicting its water content and for understanding the structural changes of post-dried BC. The dehydration of the samples was determined via water evaporation at 37 °C for different diameters and thicknesses. The gradual water evaporation observed was welldescribed by the model proposed (R2 up to 0.99). The mathematical model for BC water loss may allow the optimisation of these properties for an intended application and may be extendable for other conditions and purposes.

Funding

This work was supported by the FP7 Marie Curie International Research Staff Exchange Scheme (IRSES) project ‘Micro-Multi-Material Manufacture to Enable Multifunctional Miniaturised Devices (M6)’ [grant number PIRSES-GA-2010-269113].

History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Published in

Science and Technology of Advanced Materials

Volume

19

Issue

1

Pages

203-211

Citation

REBELO, A.R., 2018. Dehydration of bacterial cellulose and the water content effects on its viscoelastic and electrochemical properties. Science and Technology of Advanced Materials, 19(1), pp. 203–211.

Publisher

© The Authors. Published by Taylor & Francis Open

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2018-01-18

Publication date

2018-03-09

Notes

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Taylor and Francis under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

ISSN

1468-6996

Language

  • en