reactants and reaction time and temperature in order to produce products having a range of carboxyl content the test method used for determination of carboxyl content was tappi t 237 briefly the pulp is extracted with dilute hcl washed and reacted with a nahco 3 u2014 nacl solution the supernatant liquid is titrated with 0 01n hcl to the methyl red endpoint this test is believed to give a measure of the total carboxyl content of the fiber sample degree of polymerization d p was calculated from viscosity in cupriethylenediamine cuene solution determined by tappi method t 230 the relative viscosity determined by the tappi method was converted to intrinsic viscosity by astm method d 1795 this result was converted to d p by the equation a generalized curve comparing d p with carboxyl content is shown in fig1 reading from the curve it would appear that even a very low amount of carboxyl substitution by tempo catalyzed oxidation results in a significant d p reduction a sample of oxidized cellulose was made exactly according to the generalized procedure described in example 1 the resulting oxidized product was divided without drying into two equal parts one portion of the oxidized pulp comprising 25 g fiber and 81 g water was suspended in 1 l.