A Critical Role for the Presence of Lignocellulosic Material in the Determination of Wood Buffering Capacity

Abstract

The currently used determinations of wood buffering capacity, which are based on pH-metric titrations of aqueous wood extracts, neglect the effect of lignocellulosic material and the role of its insoluble constituents. This study examined the influence of the presence of wood in a system subjected to titration. A comparison of the results obtained from pine chip extracts and chip suspensions showed that the presence of wood and the wood-to-water ratio were critical factors that affected the measurement of the wood buffering capacity. The evidence showed that the resulting determination may vary by up to six times (0.28–1.99 ml/g), depending upon the conditions of the titration. In addition, it was found that the presence of wood had a neutralizing effect over the course of prolonged pH observations.

KEYWORDS:

• Acidity
• buffering capacity
• wood
• titration

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank Richard Langston for the invaluable linguistic amendments to the text.

FUNDING

This work was financially supported by Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Faculty of Wood Technology grant for young scientists No. 505-10-062700-L00477-99 to Patryk Król.