Bio-based plastics are emerging with great potential of large-scale industrial application replacing many oil based plastics. Yearly 60 billion tons of hemicellulose are produced by plants, and they are attracting more attention as a source for value added product. Xylans are the largest group of hemicelluloses and are an unutilized side stream of forestry and agriculture. As a green chemistry tool, two different ionic liquid (IL) systems were used in our study to acetylate high molecular weight pure rye arabinoxylan (AX) and spruce arabinoglucuronoxylan (AGX). In both IL systems, using optimized procedures, it was possible to achieve acetylation within 5 minutes. The full acetyl substitution of the xylans was confirmed by FT IR and 1H NMR. The acetylated xylans maintained a high molecular weight, which was confirmed by size exclusion chromatography (SEC). This finding opens new possibilities to combine isolation and modification of hemicelluloses decreasing costs and energy and chemical consumption of processes.

Ionic liquid systems for fast and efficient acetylation of xylans

247th National Meeting (2014)

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