Isolation and Characterization of Cellulose Obtained from Bagasse Pith by Oxygen-Containing Agents

Abstract

The environmentally-friendly procedure of oxygen treatment (O) and peroxide treatment with oxygen and anthraquinone as a catalyst (Po-AQ) was studied for isolation of cellulose from bagasse pith (BP) mainly consisting of parenchyma cells. The optimal conditions were: 20% alkali dosages with 12% BP consistency at 120 °C for 3 h under 0.6 MPa initial oxygen pressure for the O step; then 8% H2O2, 20% NaOH, and 0.3% AQ charges with 8% BP consistency at 120 °C for 6 h under the same oxygen pressure for the Po-AQ step. And the optimum process was: BP pretreated by cool-water extraction was firstly O-treated, and after finishing O treatment, intermediate pulp which was manually separated from effluent, was continuously processed by Po-AQ treatment. Based on the conditions above, this process can yield 37.1% of cellulose sample, containing 7.01% hemicelluloses and 0.57% lignin. The representative samples were characterized by gas chromatography (GC), Fourier transform infrared spectrometry (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM).

Keywords

• Bagasse pith
• Parenchyma cell
• Cellulose isolation
• Oxygen-containing treatment