Determination of Uronic Acids and Wood Sugars in Wood-Based Hydrolysates

This application note presents the analysis of wood hydrolysate samples in order to determine wood sugars and uronic acids using the Dionex CarboPac PA20 and PA200 columns. A single method - Method 1, which uses the Dionex CarboPac PA20 column - can be used for the simultaneous determination of mono- and disaccharides and uronic acids. However, Method 1 has a long run time and multiple dilutions of samples must be analyzed to quantify all the analytes. In contrast, the Dionex CarboPac PA200 column is specially designed to provide high-resolution separation of charged and neutral oligosaccharides and is appropriate for analysis of the charged uronic acids. Method 2 uses the Dionex CarboPac PA200 column to determine uronic acids, and can be paired with a fast (<10 min) method using the Dionex CarboPac SA10 column to determine mono and disaccharides as an alternative to Method 1.