Date of Award

8-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Degree Discipline

Chemistry

Abstract

This work focused on employing sodium salts to modify cellulose, a crucial biopolymer found in plant cell walls, to improve its characteristics. Three methods were used to study cellulose-salt interaction. Task 1 employed Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) to examine infrared absorption frequencies and discovered that the highest peak shift was caused by sodium borate (Na3BO3). In Task 2, thermal stability was evaluated using thermogravimetric analysis. The results showed that while sodium sulfate (Na2SO4) decreased stability and combustion temperature, sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) increased both. Task 3 investigated interactions between cellobiose and sodium salts using density functional theory and computational techniques, with a particular emphasis on bond lengths ≤ 3.5 Å. Sodium borate (Na3BO3) had strong binding at 1.780 Å, whereas sodium azide (NaN3) had the maximum binding activity with a bond length of 1.882 Å. According to estimations of reaction energy, sodium borate, and β-cellobiose had the maximum energy at 30.88 Kcal/mol, while sodium nitrite and α-cellobiose had the lowest energy at -97 Kcal/mol. This study shows the influence of sodium salt on cellulose.

Keywords: cellulose, biopolymer, Cellobiose, sodium salts, bond length

Committee Chair/Advisor

Ananda Amarasekara

Committee Co-Chair

Harshica Fernando

Committee Member

Sameh Abdelwahed

Committee Member

Mathew Minus

Publisher

Prairie View A&M University

Rights

© 2021 Prairie View A & M University

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Date of Digitization

9/23/2024

Contributing Institution

John B Coleman Library

City of Publication

Prairie View

MIME Type

Application/PDF

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