The sugarcane bagasse was used for producing carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) and obtaining high-molecular-mass hemicellulose as co-product. To this end, the steam explosion process was employed. Itwas found that the optimum operating conditions are the temperature of 187.15◦C, NaOH/bagasse ratioof 39% (w/w), and retention time (RT) of 10 min. Next, the obtained cellulose in the optimized conditionwas extracted and purified, and it was subsequently converted to CMC according to Williamson ether-ification technique. This paper also employed response surface methodology (RSM) to model effectivefactors against a degree of substitution (DS). Based on it, the optimum values of independent variablesare the NaOH concentration of 28.4%, MCA mass of 1.14gram, temperature of 57.85◦C, and reaction timeof 4.01 h which the CMC had the DS of 1.085, the yield of 181.302%, purity of 71.6%, and crystallinity of30.1% with low viscosity. Samples comparatively studied by FT-IR, TGA and XRD.
