Astronium urundeuva wood is well known due to its
very good mechanical, biological and chemical resistance
and therefore it is widely used in Brazil1. In spite
of this, we could not find any systematic study on the
chemical composition of this wood in the literature. In
order to investigate whether there is a relationship between
resistance and chemical constitution, we have initiated
studies to characterize the polyphenols and the lignin
structure of this wood.
To obtain a lignin mostly free of polyphenol contamination,
we employed the Björkmann procedure adapted for
Eucalyptus grandis wood cultivated in the central region of
Brazil. This wood also contains a large amount of polyphenols2.