An ionic liquid activation followed by an enzymatic saccharification step has been considered as a possible method to fractionate lignocellulosic biomass and isolate lignin with minimum degradation. This approach relies on gentle conditions to minimize lignin modifications while reducing the recalcitrance of the biomass. Our preliminary data have shown that the isolated lignin still contains significant amount of sugars, especially hemicellulose. To address this issue, the removal of hemicellulose prior to the ionic liquid activation step is investigated to obtain a higher lignin purity. Our experiments have demonstrated that the extraction of hemicellulose can be accomplished under mild conditions while removing very little amounts of lignin and cellulose.  In this presentation, hemicellulose removal followed by our ionic liquid fractionation approach with enzymatic saccharification will be presented as a possible process to isolate high purity lignin with minimum degradation. Data will be reported for an herbaceous bioenergy crop, switchgrass Panicum Virgatum 'ALAMO' variety. Advanced technologies such as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance, and pyrolysis gas chromatography-mass spectrometry coupled with multivariate analysis will be used to monitor the changes the biomass undergoes during the extraction of the hemicellulose, the ionic liquid fractionation process and to characterize the properties of the isolated lignin fraction.

Isolating lignin through an ionic liquid process

247th National Meeting (2014)

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