Polysaccharides and phenolics of miscanthus belowground cell walls and their influence on polyethylene composites

Erika Di Giuseppe (1) , Jordi Girones (1) , Loan T. T. Vo (1) , Emilie Gineau (2) , Catherine Lapierre (2) , Maryse Brancourt-Hulmel (3, 4) , Stéphanie Arnoult-Carrier (5) , Patrick Navard (1)

1 CEMEF - Centre de Mise en Forme des Matériaux
2 IJPB - Institut Jean-Pierre Bourgin
3 UPJV - Université de Picardie Jules Verne
4 Université de Lille
5 GCIE - Unité Expérimentale Grandes Cultures Innovation Environnement - Picardie

Belowground materials from two miscanthus species were ground into fragments for preparing polyethylene composites. Both species show a lot of similarities in terms of polysaccharides, lignin and cell wall-linked p-coumaric and ferulic acids contents. The structures of polysaccharides and of lignins are markedly different in the miscanthus belowground and aboveground biomass. The non-cellulosic fraction of the samples comprises a high level of xylose, with the arabinose to xylose ratio about twice as high as that observed for analogous stem samples, suggesting that belowground arabinoxylans are more substituted than stem ones. The mechanical properties of the belowground miscanthus-polyethylene composites correlate with several of their compositional traits, with similar trends as for plant stem-polyethylene composites with positive correlations for lignin and p-coumaric acid contents and negative correlations for most non-cellulosic sugars.

Mots clés: Miscanthus; Belowground materials; Polysaccharides; Cell wall phenolics; Composites; Mechanical properties

Domaines: Polymères

Erika Di Giuseppe, Jordi Girones, Loan T. T. Vo, Emilie Gineau, Catherine Lapierre, et al.. Polysaccharides and phenolics of miscanthus belowground cell walls and their influence on polyethylene composites. Carbohydrate Polymers, 2021, 251, pp.117086. ⟨10.1016/j.carbpol.2020.117086⟩. ⟨hal-03103076⟩