Production, characterization and evaluation of methylcellulose from sugarcane bagasse for applications as viscosity enhancing admixture for cement based material

In previous works, methylcellulose (MC) was prepared from sugarcane bagasse cellulose in heterogeneous medium using dimethyl sulfate (DMS) as etherification agent. MC was produced in a range of degrees of substitution (DS) from 0.70 to 1.40 and the materials showed low water solubility. In this work methylcellulose was prepared with 5 h (MC5h) of reaction with reagent substitution at each hour. MC5h showed a DS of 1.89 ± 0.04. An aqueous viscous suspension was produced with MC5h for application as viscosity enhancing admixture of cimentitious adhesive mortars. It was observed a 40.37% increase on the consistency index (CI) and a 27.70% increase on the Potential Tensile Adhesion Strength. Such characteristics show the potential of this material for the utilization in situations that require good workability, improve viscosity and adhesive properties such as for tile setting in civil engineering.