Kinetics of chitosan coagulation from aqueous solutions

ABSTRACT In this study, we investigated the kinetics of chitosan hydrogel formation from aqueous chitosan solutions with sodium hydroxide (NaOH) as the coagulant. Two sets of experiments were performed, one in a parallelepiped cell and the other with cylindrical chitosan solution extrudates. The coagulation occurred by the neutralization of the protonated amino groups ( NH3+) present in the chitosan chains, with the kinetics being controlled by NaOH transport toward the gelification zone. In this study, we confirmed the appropriateness of Fick's second law to describe NaOH transport, considering the instantaneous reaction between the NaOH and  NH3+ groups. The experimental data were used to determine the NaOH diffusion coefficient in gels having different chitosan concentrations. The diffusion coefficient values obtained from the cylindrical coagulation data were lower than those determined for linear coagulation because of the influences of transport geometry and gel structure, respectively. Accordingly, in fiber coagulation calculations, it is recommended to use diffusion coefficient values determined from cylindrical coagulation studies. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2018, 135, 46062.