Dissolving Cotton and Paper in Water (using Schweizer's Reagent)

[@hama1057]

Hi man, i'm a chemistry student from France. You're videos are so interesting man, you have a really good scientific way to present your experiments and i learn many things thanks to your work. Keep it up man !!

[@NotSoLogical]

I wonder if the cellulose powder could withstand nitration :)

[@NotSoLogical]

*wink wink*

[@stonent]

We think alike...

[@Rhodanide]

Beat me to it, bastard...

[@RadioTrefoil]

Came here to suggest that. I've always wanted to see nitration of cellulose powder.

[@NileRed]

Damn, never even thought of doing that.

[@DeliciousDeBlair]

Other than making 'gun cotton' [for propellant], cellulose nitrate is used in various plastics too.

[@yayayayya4731]

I don't think the "other" stuff matters. Haha

[@kristianblerche8443]

The shirt cellulose could be nitrated and used for making nitro cellulose lacquer to coat viscose fuse... I would very much love to see that...

[@Tadesan]

Wanted to clarify one thing. Cellulose polymer molecules, even though they are long chains, are way smaller than cellulose fibers. So physically shortening the fibers should have a relatively small effect on the solution properties. Even if you cut up or grind solid polymer materials into powders the molecules themselves remain essentially intact. That being said, chain degradation can definitely occur due to chemical attack, temperature, or radiation. Thanks for your videos!

[@jhyland87]

0:57 that looks awesome! Would make a neat screensaver

[@_nexus5943]

7:47 Hey Mr Bug on the left!!

[@arvindabharat8862]

I'm watching this video before my chemistry exam Lolz,give me strength nile

[@NileRed]

Here is some strength!

[@arvindabharat8862]

Thx for the extra strength, it worked

[@saharrmz9899]

@@NileRed hi can you help me? I made the solvent in the same way you did,but my cotton has not been dissolved yet after alomst 18 hr what should I do? I should mention this point that I add 0.1 gr of cotton to 20 ml of solvent I want to use this solution for DP test and detemination of viscosity

[@slashetc]

the auto subtitles for Schweitzer's Reagent are entertaining

[@krissp8712]

Tetra aiming!

[@ajwalters4851]

i could literally watch your videos for hours. it makes chemistry interesting. the stuff we learn in class is basic and is very bland

[@trippiechris1852]

Oh its awful. The coolest thing ive done so far is burn a stick and collecting the ash to see how much energy was burned off

[@MrMiki434]

It is interesting to see that when you add hydrocloric acid the solution turns green for a while due to the formation of the complex without the water

[@timshay9503]

Would love to see a continuation to rayon fabric if that is at all possible. Videos like this are mindblowing reminders that chemistry is something that happens to build the world around us

[@alternative_piccolo3130]

i love the green color of copper tetrachloride when you pour the HCl into the copper chloride solution

[@TheDuckofDoom.]

wood depending on species is a mix of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. Conifers have more cellulose and hardwoods have a higher ratio of hemicellulose. I might guess that lignin will mess with the process, being a another poly-saccharide. News papers are made with paper known as 'high yield' or 'high lignin' , Also, paper is made with a certain medium fiber length; too short and its generally weak, too long and the fibers just lay flat rather than crimping around each other and locking into a tight bond.

[@shreyasa.c1346]

Video

[@notenoughpaper]

Wait so you can make cloth from wood? Thats pretty cool!

[@scruffsbycartoonfish2301]

all pez I think viscose was the first man-made fibre

[@AnonymousHedge]

Would it theoretically be possible to turn small dissolved cellulose particles into larger ones by adding some kind of cross-linking agent to the solution?

[@smrts]

I would love to see you attempt making Bakelite

[@Velemir374]

Interesting exercise would be synthesizing cellulose ether, for example methylcellulose. I think this reaction is fascinating, because ether are usually much less soluble in water. Cellulose is also really insoluble in water and you need special solvents like you are showing here. But when you change hydroxide group for methoxy group you create something that is soluble in pure water. This is amazing, you can create something soluble from insoluble stuff with reaction that usually makes stuff more insoluble. :) Great video, thank you very much. :)

[@rttr5777]

second time with more explanation great video nile keep it up

[@brucebostwick256]

Is this the beginning of the viscose rayon process from the old Giant Molecules book I grew up with? If it is, a piece of the process just fell into place for me. :) (The acetate process was the other one. It’s totally different and apparently a lot slower.)

[@FilbieTron]

The brown discoloration in the sawdust cellulose is indeed lignin.

[@jopmens6960]

Would love to know about if similar reagents could dissolve chitin and chitosan and how that works (also interested in the mechanism but i guess its about disrupting all the H-bonding that cellulose can normally do with water?)

[@chiragagarwal2323]

Hey man you can make this solution more concentrated by adding 40g of copper hydroxide in 40g of conc.ammonia. This will speed up the dissolution of cellulose and also increase its efficiency. You can also use cupric carbonate instead of cupric hydroxide. Secondly use a bit more thick needle. And the threads that are forming are rayon fiber.

[@andreaquadrati]

I wonder, can you put the cellulose back into a fresh reagent and repeat the process , maybe mixing in cotton balls as well, to make short fiber cellulose longer?

[@EVERY.CIRCUIT]

Woooooow , thank you so much for all.

[@lordsamich755]

7:00 Could this be a more effective pre-treatment for enzymatic hydrolysis?

[@bpark10001]

Zinc chloride is even easier to make! To HCl solution, add excess of zinc metal until the dissolving stops. Zinc oxide powder could also be added to the HCl.

[@petevenuti7355]

I was just about to say that! I was also going to suggest some "ionic liquids" , that could be more interesting. And ask how they remove the cell walls from plant cell culture without killing the cells.

[@michaelaj4495]

Have you done this before it looks really familiar. great video anyway nile, keep it up

[@jamez6398]

Yes. This is his second run.

[@edgeeffect]

When you say "concentrated amonium hydroxide" can you define "concentrated" a little more specifically? Like a percentage or something?

[@aimandzhalmukhambetova1222]

It is usually 25% ammonium

[@stormbreaker_101]

I went to the website of the company shown on the bottle's label, and searched the product up. It seems that his product is ~30% by weight. www.sciencecompany.com/Ammonium-Hydroxide-38L-P16833.aspx

[@dubfinder]

Another great video! Maybe you could do a video where you try to separate the celullose and the plastic lining from standard paper drinking cups. Don't know if it is possible to dissolve one without dissolving the other though...

[@blumac9801]

Did anyone else see the bug at 7:49?

[@zoolapin]

its waiting to be broken down and remade as cellulose

[@sondre199811]

KZbin automaticly reduce the quality due to bit rate.

[@lkexpress]

Nile Red doing it ChemPlayer style. ;)

[@kebapconcarne9440]

Blumac5 ff

[@onemillioncats4807]

Blumac5 I

[@Zodayer]

cellulose is the most abundant organic polymer in the external natural world, found commonly in plant and vegetation molecules

[@naominekomimi]

At 10:55 what is a rayon product? Also, though it is obvious you would never actually test this, I'm curious what it tastes like. Is it possible to deduce that with science without having to put anyone in danger?

[@Puffie40]

To purify the cellulose from wood, you will need to soak the wood with sodium hydroxide to dissolve the lignin first. This is part of the "kraft" process used in pulp mills.

[@robinkouwer6318]

Cellulose spaghetti floating around in the acid at 6:03 looks pretty darn nice

[@joegoodall5779]

I'm not sure if maybe you used an annotation to correct because I'm on mobile, but to be really padantic ammonia in transition metal complexes is referred to as ammine to disinquish it from -NH2.

[@MatBaconMC]

Nile, as far as i know, the chemical name for Schweizer's Reagent is "tetraamminediaquacopper (II) dihydroxide", no?

[@joongminshin2769]

Interesting and useful video! I have wondered how to dissolve cellulose.

[@ananthkulkarni9478]

can you suggest a way to convert the dissolved cellulose to ethanol.....?

[@doomiesama4741]

Maybe try grinding the wood finer next time and disolving the waxes off?

[@akorzan]

The hydrochloric acid breaks down the cellulose. If you used sulphuric acid, the results would of been better.

[@elephystry]

*have

[@vertox4837]

wouldnt the H2SO4 *suck* the water out of the cellulose and turn it into carbon

[@void2509]

@@vertox4837 only conc H2SO4 do that, and u can use a dilute solution

[@RichardsWorld]

Now you can mix this with the Skatole that you made.

[@yigitdeniz4224]

Hey NileRed! We are doing a recycle project about clothes. Can you tell me the precentage of the consantrated ammonium hydroxide? (If you still had) And can we add more cellulose to the mixture? is 2 grams the limit? If you answer i ll appreciate it.😊

[@yigitdeniz4224]

And i relized that the video published 4 years ago😢 hope you still got the info

[@sdfdsv]

6:40 What my farts would look like if they were visible.

[@clairerokicki-counterman4059]

probably not good my friend

[@miamama9776]

sdfdsv lol

[@gopiku.pramanik9254]

Clour would have changed to red....if it is so

[@necipsahin8377]

I have tried the methods here on cotton waste before. The problem is that the fibers form nicely, but they are so flimsy that they break even with very little stretching. They are very unstable and useless.

[@matthewcurry3565]

Got any simple ideas for dissolving coffee filters friend? They are starting to really annoy me haha. Great content, and teaching/explaining as usual!

[@TylerDollarhide]

I dissolved cellulose in an unfiltered solution of ammonium hydroxide (household), copper (?) hydroxide, copper (I) sulfate, and magnesium hydroxide. I left it to evaporate and was left with blue thin sheet crystals that redissolved, and clear six sided crystals.

[@Linus-nq2op]

Wow you actually pronunciated it correct (didn't expect that) xD

[@VerbenaIDK]

6:40 i always love shots like this reminds me of rockets!

[@strangertins]

Can i also melt the cigarette filters because it is made up of cellulose acetate(form of plastic & similar to rayon)? 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

[@Li-00]

7:43 the bug scared the sht out of me

[@Solnoric]

Friend of mine had an accident with this stuff in high school. He managed to aerosolize some of it. Being a public high school there was no funding for aprons.

[@petevenuti7355]

What about methylimidazolium chloride or other ionic liquids? Also, how do they dissolve cell walls in live plant cultures without killing them?

[@ElGatoLoco698]

What is the product from dissolving cotton in Schweizer's reagent and can it be used for anything? Can you make a new fabric from it.

[@angelcosta4383]

What is the mechanism of the reaction? How does the complex interact/react with cellulose?

[@balisticsquirel]

I wonder if the white paper doesn't have an acidic coating, component, or remnant from production in it?

[@vimalbhoj5652]

Sir..nice video.. But I want to make brown and brittle paper..like aged antique paper.. Is it possible with any chemical? ? Plz help..

[@art_and_sh.t4265]

I'm not a chemist but I do that with diluted coffee. Just rest it in there and hang to dry

[@nocturnal1097]

If you want to make it from scratch get a mould and deckle, get some gampi or kozo fiber and cook that down and then beat it with a meat tenderizer until it becomes fine pulp, transfer the pulp to a bucket with just enough water to suspend it. Fill a plastic tub larger than your mould and deckle with water and add to the tub sizing or clay powder and a tablespoon of water that has been used to store okra. With a strainer pull some of the pulp from the bucket into the tub of water. Then pull a sheet of paper with the mould and deckle. Remove the deckle and place the screen (mould) paper side down onto a sheet of foamcore or sew-in interfacing. Sponge all of the excess water away and remove the mould. Either cover with a sheet of sew-in interfacing or leave to air dry The resulting paper will be thin, antique brown, make that lovely rattling noise, but it will be strong enough to handle ink or glue

[@m1ndh0ax]

LOVE UR VIDS

[@mattk6315]

Do a section of 2x4, and get more of the wood dissolved-ish. I'd like to see larger amounts of the cellulose from wood.

[@atlas8827]

Can I use this to remove cotton from my ear?

[@TheTrcInc]

Why did you use Copper(II) Hydroxide as opposed to Copper(II) sulfate pentahydrate in your similar video from 2014?

[@mariorossi-no3ic]

You can make a video where you synthesize nitrous oxide?

[@erzascarlet4694]

We used Basic copper carbonate instead of copper hydroxide. I would like to ask if basic copper carbonate works the same as copper hydroxide. Thank you!

[@sandeepshastry6647]

I wonder what would happen if u put the Schweitzer reagent in fuming nitric acid

[@jonavanderpal]

Boom, probably.

[@sandeepshastry6647]

Jona van der Pal maybe true..

[@hrishikeshkulkarni9231]

Hey NileRed, I was wondering is there any way to use a magnetic stir bar without a hot plate as I just got one thinking that it has a switch or something for turning it on and off. I got to know about the compulsory(?) hot plate later.

[@MuzikBike]

I can imagine stealing paper from recycle bins, dissolving them in this and making clothes out of them...

[@user-tr2dh4xx6u]

Wtf. The chemicals used are expensive af compared to clothes. You can also get paper for free, no need to steal it. You are basically taking trash and using expensive chemicals to make slightly more useful trash

[@_thisnameistaken]

⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻ ⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻ did you get the joke?

[@MuzikBike]

it's not exactly a joke, just a dumb idea

[@_thisnameistaken]

Muzik Bike thats kinda what i meant

[@raymondcrisostomo4923]

Can we use acetic acid as substitute for hydrochloric acid or sulfuric acid?

[@lassekongo189]

I recently became awear of the dangers of DiHydrgen MonOxide. scare stuff.

[@MrFidelmios]

Since evaporation causes the solution to revert to copper hydroxide, is there a way to crystalize the tetraammine salt. Is it possible to salt it out?

[@aetius31]

I have heard that NaOH can dissolve cellulose at cryogenic temperature (-10 to -20 °C), could you test it out?

[@Kyle-sg4rm]

+aetius31 +NileRed 48g 24 wt% NaOH precooled to 0-5 °C and 48g 14 wt% Urea precooled to 0-5 °C......... Stir 4g of cellulose (cotton linters) into the precooled NaOH for 1 min and then immediately add the precooled Urea solution and stir vigorously for 2 mins................. Cast on to a plate and regenerated using a 5 wt% Sulfuric acid bath for 5 mins at 25°C. Then rinsed in running water and then deionized water, fixed to a plate and dried at ambient temps. There's also a degasification step after the initial dissolution......... I'm trying it at the moment - I used cotton wool and I didn't want to use Sulfuric acid and have no way to degasify. Used 5% Acetic acid instead (household vinegar) but it didn't really work... The dissolution seemed to work, but after soaking in vinegar and drying the cotton wool the fibres were all still there and it just looked like paper. Any tips? Would a strong brew of black tea work any better than vinegar? Or is there another acid I could use?... Something that can be sourced of made off-grid .........Not sure why the fibres were still there. It really looked dissolved after the 2-step dissolution process. Thanks!

[@Kyle-sg4rm]

Ooops I meant 48g NaOH 14 wt% and 48g Urea 24 wt%

[@michaelmerritt7406]

How would cellulose taste?

[@Madarpok]

Here is an idea: instead of copper hydroxide, use copper nitrate and leave the solution out to dry. When it does, you will have an intimate mixture of cellulose and copper nitrate, a fuel and an oxidizer. It might burn with a nice green flame.

[@pushparadhakrishnan7343]

You should of used the cellulose in the ‘transparent wood’ episode to show how the cellulose would dissolve

[@reubenmckay]

Well, if you still have the cellulose then you could nitrate it to make nitrocellulose aka guncotton aka something that burns really well.

[@user-iq3up8ie4w]

Great video!

[@AMAJAR44]

What would happen if you were to filter long cellulose fibers while they are disolved in the reagent ?

[@eddievhfan1984]

Would the presence of dissolved lipids inhibit the effects of the reagent?

[@tripletoruses]

7:45 hello there little friend

[@thesanitycoordinator8227]

Mr. Nile Red could I use basic copper carbonate instead of copper hydroxide to make the reagent? Will it work and if do you know how much should I use?

[@htomerif]

Wouldn't using sulfuric acid to precipitate the cellulose degrade the cellulose fibers relatively quickly? I'm kind of assuming that's why you used HCl. Could you use something even weaker like formic acid? or.. frickin.. vinegar? Citric acid? Actually, it might be interesting (read "stupid") to try to 3d print a cellulose structure in a weak acidic solution using that goop.

[@orwad7916]

I loved this video. However I am curious about how cellulose is used in nature to produce flexible and strong walls. Is it the way the cellulose molecules are arranged? Do you think we can produce edible cellulose thread?

[@rachelxue1390]

Would it be possible to dissolve grass? What would it look like when you put the grass solution in the acid?

[@srikar1020]

Can the reagent dissolve some leafy greens? And can the cellulose from it be precipitated out?

[@fatlord4231]

I know this is an old video and you also did a video on making alcohol from toilet paper by using the glucose in the cellulose and fermenting it so try using this pure cellulose to make an even stronger version

[@ΧρηστοςΝτ-ψ9ν]

where did you buy nitric acid

[@reyganado6728]

is this cellulose powder the same with microcrystalline cellulose? Or additional process is needed to convert cellulose powder to microcrystalline cellulose?

[@riasatzaman8014]

Bro @NileRed HCl is a bad option for regenerating this Cuprammonium rayon, it's better to use 5-10% of HNO3 isnt it?

[@DeDraconis]

TCPO?! Yhaaaas! Dunno if that's been on future videos for a while, but I just noticed. I tried to get some of it a few years ago for my kid's science experiment at school, and pretty sure I ended up on some list. Apparently it's not just used in glowsticks, but also bombs? o.o

[@NileRed]

Bombs?? really? Yeah it has been there for a while. I need to first make white phosphorus from red and then PCl5. Then oxalyl chloride from the PCl5 and oxalic acid and then i can fianlly make my TCPO!

[@DeDraconis]

That's what someone told me while I was trying to find a place to order it from. I figured it wasn't worth it to try and do extensive Google searching for TCPO and "explosive" as a term.. though, now I just did cause no fucks, and I'm not finding any relevant results, except one thing relating it to the production of CL-20?

[@auditocanarsie7355]

How do I calculate how much Schweitzer's Reagent is needed to dissolve one 8x11 piece of paper?

[@KatherineClairmont]

hey, how do you remove alkaloids from their bound state, when extracting from plant matter?

[@Flightstar]

Don't pulp mills routinely just use NaOh by the train car load to dissolve cellulose for paper production. Seems like a long winded procedure to make this reagent to accomplish pretty much the same thing.

[@donnaperyginathome]

Actually, the process he is using is the one used specifically to make rayon. Longer fibers are needed. The sodium hydroxide with hydrolyze some of the cellulose to shorter fibers, as he did when he let is sit overnight.

[@bpark10001]

Are you aware that zinc chloride solution will also dissolve cellulose? This is the way Edison dissolved cellulose, which was extruded in alcohol to make fiber, which was washed to remove the zinc chloride, then dried, and pyrolyzed to make carbon filaments for his lamps.

[@1314zerosktr]

Shoutout to the bug that photo bombed you at 7:45

[@inceptori]

5:30 or becourse of the huge ammounts of chalk in the paper

[@mask_vids9834]

Can you make a plant out of celluse in lab?

[@asailijhijr]

What else is in cotton or rayon that makes them different at macro scales?

[@pyroromancer]

would this be safe on steel or pvc pipes? im trying to make a chemical solution for cellulose products stuck in plumbing

[@MinecrafterRedstoner]

Can you neutralize it with NaOH and rinse it in water to make the actual cellulose food additive?

[@TKsClips]

Is there any solution that could spray on dissolve paper?

[@lokia3393]

can I use tetraaminecopper(ii) sulfate instead of hydroxide?