What is carboxymethyl cellulose used for?
Carboxymethylcellulose is widely used in food to absorb and retain moisture, control crystal growth, thicken, act as a binder, extend shelf life, and provide desired texture or texture. Its greatest use is in the preparation of dry pet foods that form their own gravy when warm water is added.
Is Carboxymethyl Cellulose Harmful?
This shows that the prepared carboxymethyl cellulose has no toxic effect on cell structure at different doses, and supports the safe use of carboxymethyl cellulose as a food additive and pharmaceutical excipient.
Carboxymethyl cellulose Carboxymethyl cellulose or cellulose gum[1] is a cellulose derivative whose carboxymethyl group (-CH2-COOH) is combined with some of the hydroxyl groups of the glucopyranose monomers that make up the cellulose backbone combined. It is often used as its sodium salt, namely sodium carboxymethyl cellulose. It was once marketed under the name Tylose, which is a registered trademark of SE Tylose.
Carboxymethyl cellulose is synthesized by the reaction of cellulose and chloroacetic acid under alkali catalysis. Polar (organic acid) carboxyl groups make cellulose soluble and chemically reactive. Fabrics made from cellulose – such as cotton or viscose rayon – can also be converted to carboxymethyl cellulose.
After the initial reaction, the resulting mixture yields about 60% CMC and 40% salts (sodium chloride and sodium glycolate); the product is so-called technical carboxymethylcellulose, used in detergents. [citation needed] An additional purification process is used to remove salts to produce pure carboxymethylcellulose for food and pharmaceutical applications. [citation needed] Intermediate "semi-purified" grades are also produced, typically for paper applications such as restoration of archival documents.
The impact on inflammation, microbiota-associated metabolic syndrome, and colitis is a topic of research. Carboxymethylcellulose has been implicated as a possible cause of intestinal inflammation by altering the human gastrointestinal microbiota and has been implicated as a trigger for inflammatory bowel diseases such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. [requires non-primary source]
Carboxymethylcellulose is sometimes used as an electrode binder, especially graphite anodes, in advanced battery applications (i.e. lithium-ion batteries). CMC's water solubility makes it less toxic and less expensive to process than traditional water-insoluble binders such as polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), which require toxic n-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) for processing . Carboxymethylcellulose is often used with styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR) for electrodes that require extra flexibility, such as for silicon-containing anodes.

Carboxymethylcellulose is also used in ice packs to form a eutectic mixture that lowers the freezing point and therefore has a greater cooling capacity than ice.

Aqueous solutions of carboxymethylcellulose have also been used to disperse carbon nanotubes, where long carboxymethylcellulose molecules are thought to wrap around the nanotubes, allowing them to disperse in water.