Evaluación de la efectividad de los solventes en la eliminación de extractivos y su relación con la caracterización química de bagazo de caña de azúcar

Abstract

This project evaluates the effectiveness of three types of solvents (water, 95 % ethanol and the 1:2 ethanol-toluene mixture) which are used in the elimination of extractives (gums, tannins, colorants, sugars, starches, essential oils, waxes) and, in turn, its relationship with the chemical characterization of sugarcane bagasse is analyzed. To carry out this analysis, a biomass sampling was carried out at the Los Faiques factory located on the Girón Pasaje road in the Santa Isabel canton of the Azuay province, then the sample was pretreated for size reduction and moisture determination, allowing the correct elimination of extractives, and their subsequent chemical characterization that consisted in determining the percentage in weight of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin, for this, the standards TAPPI 204, TAPPI 222, TAPPI 212 and ASTM 1104 were applied. The results obtained showed that the sugarcane bagasse presents a humidity of 55.86 % and the solvent that eliminated a greater quantity of extractables was the 1:2 ethanol-toluene mixture, whose percentage was 31.61%, on the other hand, it was determined that the contents of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin reached values of up to 38.67 %, 36.03 % and 13.60 % respectively, in the samples treated with said solvent, because it was possible to eliminate the greatest amount of interferences in the previous stage. The research carried out reflected that there is a dependence between the elimination of extractives and the chemical characterization, since when using ethanol-toluene as a solvent, a greater amount of extractables eliminated was obtained, therefore, this solvent is ideal for this type of biomass, obtaining a more reliable amount of lignocellulosic constituents than those achieved in the samples treated with the other two solvents, due to the interferences eliminated, highlighting cellulose as the most important.