EMPIRICAL MODELING OF EUCALYPTUS WOOD PROCESSING

Eucalyptus globulus wood samples were treated with NaOH solutions in order to obtain substrates highly susceptible to enzymatic hydrolysis. The experiments performed in the extraction and hydrolysis stages followed an incomplete factorial design. Temperature, NaOH concentration and extraction time were considered as independent variables. Their influence on five dependent variables (defined to measure the extraction yield, the chemical composition of processed samples and the enzymatic conversion) was assessed using second order, empirical models. In addition to the experimental results, other aspects related to the extraction selectivity are discussed.