Optimization of oxalic acid pretreatment of moso bamboo for textile fiber using response surface methodology

In this article, samples of moso bamboo were pretreated with oxalic acid under various process conditions. Response surface methodology was applied to optimize the pretreatment conditions. A three-variable quadratic polynomial regression model was obtained to predict the cellulose content, lignin removal and hemicellulose solubilization. The reliability of the model was also evaluated by the key elements obtained from analysis of variance of the coefficients. The surface response plot and contour plot of the effects were studied to further examine the interactions of the three factors and determine the optimum levels of each factor. Finally, the optimized conditions for oxalic acid pretreatment were temperature 178.4 °C, 3.68 % oxalic acid and 28.4 min, respectively. The maximum predicted value of cellulose content in the residue fraction was 64.98 %, along with 79.43 % lignin removal and 96.71 % hemicellulose solubilization after the oxalic acid pretreatment.