Drying Method Effect on Structural and Surface Properties of Brown Algae Cellulose

The article presents a study of the influence of three drying methods (vacuum drying, freeze-drying and supercritical drying) on the physicochemical properties and macroscopic structure of Arctic brown algae cellulose. It shows that freeze-died and supercritically dried algal celluloses have lower thermal stability due to the predominance of the metastable Iα phase in them, degree of crystallinity of 48–69% and a fibrillar surface. Freeze-dried cellulose and especially supercritically dried cellulose have a larger specific surface area (up to 186 m 2 /g) and a developed mesoporous structure with the average pore diameter of 13.81–14.81 nm.