A rapid quantitative method to assess Eucalyptus wood properties for Kraft pulp production by FT-Raman spectroscopy

To assess kraft pulp properties produced from Eucalyptus trees, the feasibility of using Fourier transform - Raman spectroscopy for rapid non-destructive quantification of wood constituents, anatomy and basic density was examined. Wood constituents such as contents of holocellulose, α-cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, extractives, lignin syringyl/guaiacyl ratio and hemicellulosic neutral sugar composition were examined. Wood anatomy features such as proportion of cell types, cell length, cell wall ratio, cell width and wall thickness of vessels and fibres were examined. The application of various order-of-derivative transformations for Raman spectroscopic data with multivariate data analysis, including cross-validation, revealed highly significant correlations between conventionally measured and Raman-predicted values for all traits, except rhamnose and vessels ratio with correlation coefficient > 0.8 both in calibration and in prediction The calibration models obtained are more stable than in our previous reports because a smaller number of factors was utilized in the trait of all wood constituents, and basic density, avoiding overfitting.