(632f) Novel Solvent Deconstruction of Woody Biomass and Isolation of High Purity Lignin

Abstract Submission to
Be Considered As An Oral Presentation at AIChE 2016 Annual Meeting in the
Chemical Conversion Processes in Forest/Plant Biomass Biorefineries Session

Novel Solvent
Deconstruction of Woody Biomass and Isolation of High Purity Lignin

Karissa Garcia, Ruoshui Ma,
Scott Geleynse, Xiao Zhang

Washington State University

            Lignin is the most abundant
renewable aromatic polymer on territorial earth present in all high plants.
Emerging interests in commercialization of lignocellulosic biofuel process
injected new enthusiasm to lignin valorization. Due to the main objective of
optimizing cellulosic fiber and/or carbohydrate recovery, most of current
lignin isolated from either paper making or biorefineries are
often difficult to purify and/or has been indiscriminately modified
depending on the process conditions. It appears that one strategy has been
overlooked is to devise a new method and/or identify a new solvent to extract
lignin from plant biomass with a high purity and minimized structural heterogeneity.

            Herein, we will report a new
method of applying Deep Eutectic Solvents (DES) for extracting lignin from
woody biomass with high yield and high purity. Four different DES were
evaluated for treatment of hardwood and softwood. It was found that these DES
treatments can selectively extract a significant amount of lignin from wood
with high yields: 78% from hardwood and 58% from softwood. The extracted lignin
has high purity (95%) with unique structural properties. The mechanism of DES
cleavage of ether bonds between phenylpropane units was investigated. The
results from this study demonstrate that DES is a promising solvent for wood
delignification and the production of a new source of lignin with promising
potential applications.

Presenting
author:

Karissa
Garcia

School
of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering

Washington
State University

Contact:
karissa.garcia@wsu.edu, x.zhang@wsu.edu