Accelerated solvent extraction—An efficient tool to remove extractives from tree-rings

Prior to performing stable isotope analysis in tree rings, investigators usually extract cellulose from wood samples, which represents a tedious and time-consuming task. In this experiment, two different protocols for holocellulose extraction were compared, namely the Jayme-Wise technique and the Accelerated Solvent Extractor (ASE), a relatively new device operating under high temperature and pressure. We found that both techniques are equivalent regarding resin removal, produce comparable δ13C results, do not damage the samples, and leave no resin in the xylem rays after treatment. However, the ASE is a lot less time-consuming, being ten times faster than the soxhlet based method, in addition to being safer and more convenient.