Viscometric study of chitosan solutions in acetic acid/sodium acetate and acetic acid/sodium chloride.

A viscometric study was carried out at 25°C to assess the physical-chemical behavior in solution and the mean viscometric molar mass (M¯v) of chitosan solutions with different deacetylation degrees, in two solvent mixtures: medium 1-acetic acid 0.3mol/L and sodium acetate 0.2mol/L; and medium 2-acetic acid 0.1mol/L and sodium chloride 0.2mol/L. Different equations were employed, by graphical extrapolation, to calculate the intrinsic viscosities [η] and the viscometric constants, to reveal the solvent's quality: Huggins (H), Kraemer (K) and Schulz-Blaschke (SB). For single-point determination, the equations used were SB, Solomon-Ciuta (SC) and Deb-Chanterjee (DC), resulting in a faster form of analysis. The values of ̄M¯v were calculated by applying the equation of Mark-Houwink-Sakurada. The SB and SC equations were most suitable for single-point determination of [η] and ̄M¯v and the Schulz-Blachke constant (kSB), equal to 0.28, already utilized for various systems, can also be employed to analyze chitosan solutions under the conditions studied.