Rheological behavior of Hydroxyethylcellulose (HEC) Solutions

The polymers have a wide applicability in several domains particularly in the food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals industry and petroleum industry. They guarantee a high degree of mix-ability, pump-ability, and pour-ability during their treatment. For this, the flow properties of aqueous non ionic derivative cellulose solutions at different concentrations were measured over a wide range of shear rates (0-1000 s(-1)), and the temperature was kept at 20 degrees C. The studied concentrations of the polymer solutions show a marked non-Newtonian shear-thinning behavior. No yield stress and thixotropy were detected. In order to define the type of flow behavior, several rheological models such as Power law, Williamson, and Mendes-Dutra were used to fit the rheogramms based on the correlation coefficient (R-2). These models are all applicable and have an equivalent ability to describe the shear flow behavior of concentrated solutions. Rheological parameters such as consistency index, flow index, derived from these models were then subjected to further analysis.