As a new chemicals industry based upon biomass sources emerges, there is an opportunity to create this on a sustainable basis from the outset. Ionic liquids have already shown their use in creating a more sustainable chemicals industry and through the introduction of more sustainable processes. Using the knowledge that we have gained about the effects of solvent-solute interactions in ionic liquids, we have been developing these as solvents for lignocellulosic biomass processing.We present here our development of ionic liquids to fractionate lignocellulosic biomass, so that cellulose is made available for subsequent biological processing and the lignin component can be recovered for conversion into high value chemicals. We consider the optimum conditions for these reactions. We also present the use of ionic liquids to the energy requirements of mechanical processing of the biomass.

Ionic liquids for biomass processing

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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