Abstract
In this work, steam explosion (STEX), microwave assisted extraction (MAE) and high voltage electrical discharges (HVED) pretreatments have been evaluated for their impact on the physicochemical characteristics of extracted hemicellulosic polymers and on the resulting hemicellulose-based films. Extraction was carried out on spruce sawdust pre-soaked in water (WPS) or 1 M NaOH solution (SPS). The results have shown that STEX pretreatment gave the highest hemicellulose yields (64 and 66 mg g−1 of dry wood from WPS and SPS respectively) followed by MAE and HVED whilst MAE pretreatment produced the highest molecular mass (Mw~66 kDa of arabinoglucoronoxylans from SPS and 56 kDa for galactoglucomannans from WPS). A relatively high acetylation degree was found for STEX WPS (acetylation degree ≈ 0.35) and a high lignin content for STEX SPS (≈12%). Films have been produced by casting using sorbitol as plasticizer. Low oxygen barrier and light transmittance properties were observed for the films obtained from hemicelluloses extracted from SPS due to their high molecular mass and to intermolecular bonding of hemicelluloses and lignin.
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