High Temperature Lignin Separation for Improved Yields in Ethanol Organosolv Pre-Treatment

Johannes Adamcyk (), Stefan Beisl and Anton Friedl
Additional contact information
Johannes Adamcyk: Institute of Chemical, Environmental and Bioscience Engineering, TU Wien, 1060 Vienna, Austria
Stefan Beisl: Lignovations GmbH, 3400 Klosterneuburg, Austria
Anton Friedl: Institute of Chemical, Environmental and Bioscience Engineering, TU Wien, 1060 Vienna, Austria

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 4, 1-12

Abstract: The full utilization of renewable raw materials is necessary for a sustainable economy. Lignin is an abundant biopolymer, but is currently mainly used for energy production. Ethanol organosolv pre-treatment produces high-quality lignin, but still faces substantial economic challenges. Lignin solubility increases with temperature, and previous studies have shown that it reprecipitates during cooling after the pre-treatment. Thus, a possibility for the optimization of lignin production with this process can be the separation of extract and residual biomass at high temperatures. In this work, lignin was extracted from wheat straw at 180 °C, and the extract was separated from the remaining solids at several temperatures after the pre-treatment. The results show that 10.1 g/kg of lignin and 2.2 g/kg of carbohydrates are dissolved at the pre-treatment temperature of 180 °C, which is reduced to 8.6 g/kg of lignin and 1.2 g/kg of carbohydrates after cooling. The precipitation of lignin separated from the extracts at 180 °C showed that a higher lignin concentration at high temperatures results in a 46% improvement in the yield of solid lignin, while there was no significant impact on the lignin purity.

Keywords: biorefinery; organosolv; lignin; pre-treatment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/4/3006/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/4/3006/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:4:p:3006-:d:1060489

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().