How do you prepare rayon from cellulose?

Answer 1

Aim of the projects

The main objective of the project is to illustrate the preparation of rayon by the cuprammonium process. Instead of wood pulp as the cellulose source, attempt is done to make use of raw cellulose products such as waste paper(un-printed), filter paper etc.

Apparatus and chemicals

Beakers(250 ml.)

Conical flask(250ml.)

Filter flask

Funnel,glass rod

Sodium hydroxide solution

Copper sulphate

50% Ammonia solution

Filter paper strips

Syringe

Procedure

until a precipitate is formed. Add NaOH solution to complete precipitation. Filter off the precipitate and wash it with water two or three times until the washing does not give a precipitate with barium chloride solution. Tranfer the precipitate into a beaker and add 50 ml. of liquid ammonia.. The precipitate dissolves giving a deep blue transparent solution. This is known as Schweitzer's reagent.

Cut few filter paper strips (about 1g) intosmall pieces and add them into the cuprammoniam reagent taken into a conical flask. Close the flask with a cork and keep it over night. When all the pieces of filter paper have dissolved, the solution will be viscous(called viscose).

The viscous solution is drawn into a syringe. Keeping the nozzle of a syringe inside 5M sulphuric acid solution taken in a beaker, the solution in the syringe is forced into the acid solution. Move the nozzle of the syringe in the acid solution continuously to form long filaments of rayon in the acid solution. The beaker containing rayon fibers is allowed to stand undistributed until the blue colour of the rayon filaments disappears and becomes white. Remove the rayon threads from the acid bath, wash with water and dry using filter paper.

Result

Mass of filter paper strips used = …..g

Mass of rayon thread formed = ……..g

Answer 2

Rayon is prepared by dissolving cellulose in a solution to form a viscous liquid. This solution is then forced through tiny holes to produce fibers, which are then solidified and spun into yarn. The resulting yarn can be woven or knitted into fabric.