MnCl₂ as a Novel Catalyst for Acetylation of Cotton-Giza 86 Cellulose and its Application to Machine Oil Removal

Cotton-Giza 86 Gossypium hirsutum (Egyptian cotton) was used to produce cellulose that efficiently esterified with acetic anhydride in the presence of manganese (II) chloride tetra-hydrate as a novel catalyst in a solvent free system under conventional reflux and microwave irradiation conditions. The influence of the amount of catalyst and the time of reaction on the esterification process have been studied. Best result was achieved from refluxing of 20 g of cellulose and 2.0 g of MnCl₂ in 300 mL of AC₂O for 48 h. The acetylated Cotton-Giza 86 cellulose can be also obtained in 91% yield under microwave irradiation within 6 min using 200 mL of AC₂O and 1 g of MnCl₂. The production of acetylated Cotton-Giza 86 cellulose was confirmed by FT-IR, ¹H-NMR and thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA). The heavy and light oil machine sorption capacities of the acetylated Cotton-Giza 86 cellulose were respectively 2.1 and 1.2 times higher than the commercial synthetic oil sorbent polypropylene fibers. The results implied that acetylated Cotton-Giza 86 cellulose can be used as a substitute for non-biodegradable oil sorption materials.