Xyloglucan adsorption for measuring the specific surface area on various never-dried cellulose nanofibers

Abstract In this paper, we explore xyloglucan adsorption to cellulose nanofibers as a method for the evaluation of their quality (i. e., the degree of disintegration) and the accessible surface area in the wet state and at low ionic strength. This method was shown to be capable of estimating the surface areas of 14 different cellulose nanofiber qualities from both hardwood and softwood with different pretreatments, including enzymatic hydrolysis using a monocomponent endoglucanase, TEMPO-mediated oxidation, and carboxymethylation. The cellulose surface measured using this method showed a correlation with the degree of disintegration expressed as transmittance for different concentrations of xyloglucan.