Development of a rapid method for the quantification of cellulose in tobacco by 13C CP/MAS NMR

• A rapid method was developed to quantify cellulose content in tobacco using 13C CP/MAS NMR with spectral deconvolution.
• A designed NMR rotor was used to eliminate the unfavorable impact of the instability and high-speed rotation for internal standard.
• Spectral deconvolution technique eliminated the interference of overlapping peaks and excessive noise.
• The method showed good agreement and small average deviations between standard chemical method and values by 13C CP/MAS NMR spectra.

A method was developed for rapid quantitative determination of cellulose in tobacco by utilizing 13C cross polarization magic angle spinning NMR spectroscopy (13C CP/MAS NMR). Sample powder was loaded into NMR rotor, which was customized rotor containing a matched silicon tube as an intensity reference. 13C CP/MAS NMR spectra of tobacco samples were processed with spectral deconvolution to obtain the area of the C-1 resonance at 105.5 ppm and the internal standard at 0 ppm. The ratio between the area of 105.5 ppm and 0 ppm of a set of standard cellulose samples was used to construct a calibration curve. The cellulose content of a tobacco sample was determined by comparison of the ratio between the area of 105.5 ppm and 0 ppm to the calibration curve. Results of this developed method showed good agreement with those obtained from chemical analysis. The proposed method has such advantages of accuracy, quickness and efficiency, and could be an alternative to chemical analyses of cellulose.