Research article

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In the present work, cellulose obtained from sisal, which is a source of rapid growth, was used. Cellulose acetates were produced in heterogeneous medium, using acetic anhydride as esterifying agent and iodine as catalyst, to check if the procedure described in the literature for commercial cellulose also is adequate to sisal cellulose. The results indicated that iodine is an excellent catalyst to obtain sisal cellulose acetates, but the reaction is so fast as described in the literature when, instead of sisal, lower average molar weight cellulose (microcrystalline) is used. The crystallinity index (I_c) of sisal cellulose acetates diminished compared to sisal cellulose, but there was no direct correlation between their degree of substitution (DS) and I_c. Probably acetyl groups were introduced more homogeneously along the short chains of microcrystalline cellulose, when compared to sisal cellulose, and then for microcrystalline cellulose acetates the I_c decreases as DS increases. Using the linear correlation that was found between degree of substitution (DS) and time reaction is possible to control the DS of sisal cellulose acetates, considering a large interval of degrees of substitution (0.3–2.8).