Determination of carbohydrates in acid hydrolysates of wood

To prepare wood for the production of alcohol based biofuels by fermentation, the wood must first be hydrolyzed in strong acid with applied heat to yield the constituent monosaccharides needed for fermentation.  Quantification of those monosaccharides allows an estimate of the biofuel yield. This poster describes a liquid chromatography (LC) method for quantifying monosaccharides from acid hydrolysates of wood that resolves all the released monosaccharides and cellobiose in less than ten minutes using high-performance anion-exchange chromatography. The separated carbohydrates, fucose, arabinose, rhamnose, glucose, mannose, xylose, fructose, and cellobiose are detected by pulsed amperometry.  The method requires only sample dilution prior to LC analysis and the mobile phase for chromatography is prepared automatically by the instrument, which reduces labor and increases method accuracy.  Using the same LC technology for carbohydrate analysis but with a different high-performance anion-exchange column, we also developed two methods to determine the glucuronic and galacturonic acid contents of the same acid hydrolysate of wood (loblolly pine). One method determines the two uronic acids, while the other method determines the two uronic acids as well as the monosaccharides. Analytical details (e.g., reproducibility, accuracy, etc.) will be presented for each of the three methods.