ABSTRACT
In order to determine the chemical nature of the compounds present in seaweed, vibrational spectroscopy arises as a useful tool, as it can reveal detailed information concerning the properties and structure of materials at a molecular level. Until now, this type of analysis required the extraction of polysaccharides and other compounds, through lengthy and complicated procedures. With the development of FTIR diffuse-refl ectance spectroscopy (DRIFTS) it became possible to directly analyze ground, dried seaweed material (Chopin and Whalen 1993). On the other hand, the development of Raman Spectroscopy with affordable low energy lasers (FT-Raman) allowed the use of this complementary technique in the study of the same ground samples.
