Abstract
Wood pellet is a good medium for storage and transportation of woody biomass, and so it could be a promising raw material for biorefinery. Since wood components may suffer from heat and pressure during pelletization, it is essential to understand the change of chemical composition. Wood meals with equal size distribution for reliable compositional analysis were prepared from wood pellet (composed of cedar and Japanese cypress) and its raw sawdust before pelletization. Pelletization led to tiny changes in the amount and kinds of ethanol-benzene extractives, in which antifungal chemicals derived from Japanese cypress were mainly observed. Wood pellet has almost the same amount of polysaccharides and lignin as raw sawdust with only slightly less mannose, glucose, galactose in its compositional sugars. Namely, wood pellet has an equivalent potential to be a raw material for production of essential oils, sugars and functional lignins.
