Xylitol was recovered from fermented sugarcane bagasse hemicellulosic hydrolysate by adsorption and crystallization procedures. Silica gel adsorption was employed to purify the broth containing xylitol. In this step, different mixtures of the solvents ethyl acetate, ethanol and acetone were used as eluent, and different proportions of fermented broth volume incorporated per gram of silica gel (V-b/M-sg, varying from 1.0 to 2.0 cm(3) g(-1)) were used to pack the column employed as stationary phase bed. The xylitol purification efficiency varied for each mixture of solvent, and for each V-b/M-sg ratio used. The purified broth was submitted to different crystallization procedures (cooling, concentration and supplementation with commercial xylitol) aiming to recover xylitol crystals. The best result (60% crystallization yield and 33% total recovery of xylitol from fermented broth) was obtained when the column was packed with a V-b/M-sg ratio of 2 cm(3) g(-1), and the broth was purified with a mixture of ethyl acetate and ethanol, concentrated 6.5-fold, and supplemented with commercial xylitol to force the precipitation. (c) 2006 Society of Chemical Industry