EXAMINATION OF THE SURFACE FREE ENERGY AND ACID-BASE PROPERTIES OF CELLULOSE BY THE COLUMN WICKING TECHNIQUE AND THE CRITICAL PACKING HEIGHT/DENSITY

The column wicking technique was applied to estimate the surface free energy of cellulose, the importance of which is to obtain a real effective capillary radius, Reff, initially from the plot of Washburn penetration distance versus time. Since the cellulose sample could not be packed with good reproducibility, therefore, Reff can not be obtained readily from the slope of the plot. A method was developed in this paper by uniting all apparent packing heights with a unique value to deduce a real effective capillary radius. Based on the defined critical packing height related to the critical packing density, the surface free energy and acid-base properties of cellulose Sigma C8002 were estimated.