*3.1. Materials*

The bamboo used in the experiment was collected from Hunan Province, China. Prior to the experiments, the bamboo was decorticated, ground, and sieved to about 40-mesh size. The obtained particles were oven-dried at 55 ◦C to a constant weight. The compositional analysis (glucose, xylose, arabinose, and lignin) of the bamboo was performed according to an established National Renewable Energy Laboratory procedure [32] with a resulting composition of 49.1 wt.% glucose, 12.0 wt.% xylose, 2.0 wt.% arabinose, and 37.1 wt.% lignin.

The corncob used in this study was obtained from Shandong Province, China. Before the experiments, corncob was ground to pass through a 40-mesh screen, and then dewaxed with a 2:1 (v/v) acetone/ethanol mixture in a Soxhlet extractor (1000 mL, Synthware Glass Co. Ltd., Beijing, China) for 6 h. The dewaxed corncob was oven-dried at 60 ◦C to constant weight and milled for 6 h (300 rpm) with a ball-milling machine (DECO-PBM-V, Deco Co. Ltd., Hunan, China). The composition of the dewaxed corncob was 38.1 wt.% glucose, 31.9 wt.% xylose, 4.2 wt.% arabinose, and 25.8 wt.% lignin.

Chemicals FeCl3•6H2O (AR, ≥99.0%), H2SO4 (AR, ≥98.0%), ethanol (AR, ≥99.0%), phenolphthalein (AR, ≥99.0%), and NaOH (AR, ≥99.0%) were purchased from Kermel Co. Ltd. (Tianjin, China). Standard reagents, including glucose (HPLC, ≥99.0%), xylose (HPLC, ≥99.0%), arabinose (HPLC, ≥98.0%) were purchased from Shanghai Sigma-Aldrich Trading Co. Ltd. (Shanghai, China). Deionized (DI) water was used to prepare all of the solutions. All of the chemicals were used as received.
