3.3. Particle size of bamboo substrates after NaOH+UHPE pretreatment
UHPE can obviously destroy the bamboo cell structure.
Although all untreated raw bamboo samples were screened by
80 meshes sieve shaker, the particle size of 2- and 5-year-old bamboo
was still too large for the access of the inlet nozzle of the Laser
Particle Size Analyzer. They were still blocked even after NaOH
pretreatment. So, the particle size of NaOH + UHPE pretreated
bamboo substrates were just determined. Table 2 shows the particle
size of bamboo changes after NaOH + UHPE pretreatment. The
average particle size of samples decreased after NaOH + UHPE pretreatment,
and was almost around 0.43 mm (in length) and
25.0 lm (in width). After NaOH + UHPE pretreatment, the sample
surface was stripped by explosion. It can be seen that the average
vessel area of samples was greatly increased after pretreatment,
which was exactly similar with other lignocellulosic biomass (Jin
et al., 2015).