Improved pretreatments and fractionation of soft and hardwoods to access feedstock chemicals

Summary Description:

Whilst current approaches to the use of wood are highly optimised and integrated, novel technologies can be developed that further improve the efficiency of use of all the possible product streams. The current use of LIGNIN derived from wood is to burn it and this represents an inefficient use of this potentially valuable resource. It is desirable to convert wood into a set of product streams that can be used for several different applications.

One of these streams should be a high quality Lignin, whilst other streams should contain cellulose and hemicellulose-derived sugars. Current methods of isolating high quality lignin from (i) Sitka spruce and (ii) mixtures of soft and hardwoods can be improved. After isolation from the wood, it will be advantageous to purify (fractionate) the Lignin before attempts are made to convert it to feedstock chemicals. The proposed programme of work builds on these assumptions.