Owing to its diverse chemical functionality, lignin from lignocellulosic biomass have recently gained significant interest as a suitable green replacement for petro-based polyols in polyurethane industry which represents total annual production of 5.8 billion pounds. Recent advancements in biomass pretreatment have improved extraction and recovery of clean lignin streams from biomass while minimizing impact to sugars to support the development of high performance lignin-based polyurethanes (LPUs) capable of supplanting existing targetted nonrenewable polyurethane applications such as foams and films. Here we use Co-solvent Enhanced Lignocellulosic Fractionation (CELF) as an advanced lignin-first biomass pretreatment method to efficiently extract and recover highly pure technical lignin product from hardwood poplar. CELF uniquely applies tetrahydrofuran (THF) as a water co-solvent in mild acidic reaction to achieve high levels of fractionation between biomass lignin and sugar fractions while minimizing their degradation. By varying the CELF pretreatment reaction conditions, we had generated different CELF lignin samples comprising a range of different molecular composition, as analyzed by HSQC NMR. We determined that the tunable molecular features of CELF lignin products including hydroxyl contents, molecular weight, and polymer chain flexibility have a significant impact on the mechanical and thermal behaviors of CELF-LPUs that we had synthesized. By mapping the functional changes of CELF-LPUs to changes in lignin macromolecular structures, as obtained during CELF pretreatment, we may better understand how to develop precise methods for tuning the performance of LPUs for target applications.

Tunable molecular features of CELF lignin and CELF lignin-based polyurethanes

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.