Lignin has been regarded as an under-utilized by-product of the chemical pulping and cellulosic ethanol industries. To improve the financial profit of these processes and prevent a major loss of resources, value-added products could be produced from lignin. Recently, different processes were developed for generating lignin at commercial scales in an effort to facilitate the production of value-added products from lignin. For example, the LignoBoost and LignoForce technologies are commercial processes for producing kraft lignin, while TMPBio technology is employed for producing hydrolysis lignin in a cellulosic enzymatic process. Due to the commercial availability of lignin, extensive research has been conducted on producing altered lignin based value-added products. However, efforts in producing value-added water-soluble lignin-based products including dispersants and flocculants are mainly limited to the research conducted by Dr. Fatehi in the past 7 years in Canada.<br/>Dispersants and flocculants are water soluble chemicals with significant worldwide applications. Dispersants are widely used in the mining, oil, textile and construction industries. Flocculants are widely used in the mining industry for density control in thickeners, or as rheology modifiers in the concentrate thickeners, for instance. They are also used in municipal and industrial wastewater systems. However, the commercial dispersants and flocculants are mainly oil-based, ineffective, expensive and/or non-biodegradable.<br/>Lignin can be tailored to have diverse charge densities, molecular weights and degrees of hydrophilicity, all of which are of significant importance for dispersants/flocculants. After chemical modification for dispersant and flocculant production, lignin-based polymers will inherent some unique features from lignin (e.g. hydrophobicity and three-dimensional structure) that are not available in the currently used commercial flocculants/dispersants. In this presentation, Dr. Fatehi will elucidate 1) recent development in the production of lignin-based water-soluble products following polymerization and grafting pathways, and 2) fundamental challenges and opportunities associated with the generation, characterization and use of such products.

Recent progress in the generation of lignin based water soluble polymers

2019 Fall National Meeting

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