Chemical composition in sugarcane bagasse: Delignification with sodium hydroxide

Abstract

Sugarcane bagasse is a cheap agro-based waste material. These biomass materials have a lot of potential to be converted into useful products such as carbon. Sugarcane bagasse was extracted by sodium hydroxide. Several characterizations has been done to analyse the chemical properties of sugarcane bagasse after extraction by sodium hydroxide including FTIR, XRF, HPLC and SEMEDS. SEM showed an increase in internal surface area of the lignocellulose particles and weakening of the structural, while EDS showed 60.59 % content of carbon. HPLC results showed some peaks at different retention times. The organic compound could be observed by retention time at 9.611 minute with 66.428 % of height and it was identified as schaftoside. FTIR showed that the peak was shifted from 1096 cm-1 to 1638 cm-1, indication the presence of H-O-H (water adsorption). The element with the highest concentration that found by using XRF in untreated sugarcane bagasse was water, H2O (98.5 %), followed by sodium, Na (0.669 %) and sulfur, S (0.638 %). The concentration of each element was decreased (except H2O) after being treated with NaOH. Sugarcane bagasse which treated with alkaline solution was more suitable to be applied in the industry compared to acidic solution. This was due to the high reactivity of acidic solution that might damage the entire structural compounds of sugarcane bagasse.