Chemical and Morphological Characterization of Sugarcane Bagasse Submitted to Delignification Process for Enhanced Enzymatic Digestibility Additional Information 2: Drift Experiments

Diffuse Reflectance Fourier Transformed Infrared (DRIFT) spectroscopy is an excellent tool for chemical analysis of lignocellulosic biomass, since it is non-destructive and requires minimal sample preparation. It is also a fast and direct technique that has been employed to reduce base-line errors caused by light scattering [1]. DRIFT spectra of untreated sugarcane bagasse and of samples treated with different NaOH concentrations are shown in Figure A1. Table A1 shows a summary of the main peaks (numbered from 1 to 14 on the untreated bagasse spectrum in Figure A1) and their respective assignments, whose determination was based on published data [2-5]. Due to biomass complexity, most of the spectral bands have contributions from its three major components (lignin, cellulose and hemicelluloses).