Generally, CMC obtained from alkalization of cellulose then followed by carboxymethylation process using sodium monochloroacetate (NaMCA) as reagent usually provided DS value in the range of 0.4–1.3 (Waring and Parsons, 2001; Adinugraha et al., 2005). The DS from this work was in the range between 0.56 and 0.87 (Figure 1). The DS value increased with initial increasing of NaOH concentration (20 to 30%). However, the DS value gradually declined when NaOH content further increased (40 to 60%). The maximum DS was 0.87 which attained from CMCd synthesized with 30% NaOH. This finding could be explained by considering the carboxymethylation procedure, where two competitive reactions took place simultaneously. The first involved reaction of the cellulose hydroxyl with NaMCA in the presence of NaOH to yield CMC. The second reaction was the conversions of NaMCA to sodium glycolate as byproduct by react with NaOH (Kirk and Othmer, 1967). This means the first reaction prevails over second reaction up to alkali concentration of 30%. Above this level, there was glycolate formation which means activation of NaMCA and its consumption by this side reaction. This was likely