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Lynne Wong's PhD thesis

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leave some residual moisture on the fibres; on the other hand, high temperature drying<br />

could have altered the characteristics of the fibre, e.g. activating it. Qin and White (1991)<br />

dried the fibres at 60 °C in an atmospheric oven for eight hours. Mangion and Player<br />

(1991) vacuum dried the fibres at 80 °C before performing the Brix-free water<br />

determination.<br />

4.3.3 Temperature at which Brix-free water is measured<br />

Qin and White (1991) changed the temperature of the controlled atmosphere cabinet, and<br />

tests carried out at three temperatures with a 5° Brix sucrose solution and at a 4:1 contact<br />

solution/fibre ratio showed no trend.<br />

4.3.4 Method of sample preparation<br />

Mangion and Player (1991) used three different types of equipment to extract fibre: a wet<br />

disintegrator, a Jeffco cutter-grinder and a gyratory-type machine grinder. The fibre<br />

obtained from the first two devices looked similar and gave comparable Brix-free water<br />

values, while that from the last device looked finer and yielded a higher Brix-free water<br />

value by 5 units. They attributed the higher value to an increased sample surface area per<br />

unit mass.<br />

4.3.5 Methods of measurement<br />

Mangion and Player (1991) also showed that Brix-free water results depend on the<br />

analytical techniques used to detect the change in concentration of the contacting solution<br />

after mixing with the fibre. They found parallel results on 13 analyses by a refractometric<br />

technique gave values two units higher than a polarimetric measurement (22.1% compared<br />

to 19.8%).<br />

4.3.6 Cane variety<br />

Mangion and Player (1991) carried out 20 analyses each of six cane varieties in the same<br />

region, and obtained values ranging from 17.0 to 20.3% Brix-free water. They attributed<br />

the variation in results to possible differences in fibre/pith ratios in the samples analysed<br />

and errors associated with the Brix measurements.<br />

4.3.7 Pith and rind<br />

Qin and White (1991) separated fibre, pith and rind from bagasse samples by sieving and<br />

manual selection. Brix-free water results, obtained with a 5° Brix sucrose contacting<br />

117

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