Title
Obtainment of hemicellulose derivatives and cellulose pulp from wheat straw following cold alkaline extraction
Authors
MARIA T. GARCIA ASCENSION ALFARO JUAN C. GARCIA MINERVA A. M. ZAMUDIO ANA B. MORALES and FRANCISCO LOPEZ

Received September 30, 2015
Published Volume 51 Issue 5-6 May-June
Keywords biorefinery, wheat straw, hemicelluloses, cold alkaline extraction, soda-anthraquinone, pulp, paper

Abstract
In this work, we addressed the integral exploitation of wheat straw by fractionating its lignocellulosic components, following removal of hemicelluloses by cold alkaline extraction. The treatment provided a liquid fraction that was used to obtain hemicelluloses by alcoholic precipitation and a solid fraction that gave cellulose pulp by soda–anthraquinone delignification.The proposed processing scheme is environmentally friendly because it uses cold alkaline extraction to valorize the hemicellulose fraction of wheat straw, while facilitating its delignification, which can be thus accomplished under milder conditions. This saves raw material and energy, and provides paper sheets similarly strong to those obtained from untreated cellulose.