Sieving process selects sugarcane bagasse with lower recalcitrance to xylan solubilization

BACKGROUND Sugarcane bagasse is a heterogeneous and organized material that needs a pretreatment to access the polysaccharides (cellulose and xylan). The particle size of a non‐milled bagasse can influence the xylan and xylose solubilization, as well as the enzymatic hydrolysis of the pretreated material. Using bagasse selected on 16‐, 30‐, 40‐ and 50‐mesh sieves: xylan solubilization was performed with hydrogen peroxide; xylose was solubilized with diluted sulfuric acid; and enzymatic hydrolysis was conducted for glucose yield evaluation. RESULTS The xylose solubilized by acid pretreatment resulted in a maximum of 6.59 g L−1 with no influence of particle size. The solubilized xylan showed linear correlation with a variation of 36.18% (16‐mesh bagasse) to 71.43% (