Re: What is the reaction between cellulose and sodium hydroxide?

Cellulose dos not react directly with NaOH. What changes when you treat the 
wood with NaOH is the level of contamination with other sugars.
The plant cell wall (the stuff wood is made of) is a mixture of many 
different substances, especially polysaccharides and lignin. All of these 
compounds are stable in NaOH. However, they can be extracted from the wood 
under different conditions. When you treat the wood with hydroxide, you 
extract many polysaccharides from the wood (called hemicelluloses) and get 
cellulose almost pure.
I do not know how you are analysing cellulose, but when you treat wood with 
hydroxide 4H (be carefull, it is extremelly corrosive and dangerous at 
such a high concentration) you extract almost all hemicellulose (xylans, 
xyloglucans, galactomannans, etc.) and get cellulose. This is not a 
chemical reaction, but a physical characteristic of these polysaccharides 
(solubility under these chaotropic conditions). Some fragmentation 
probably occurs (hydrolysis), but since cellulose is a very big molecule, 
it does not make much difference.
Hope I answered what you asked. If you want, mail me at 
m_thorn@hotmail.com.
Bye,
Marco.