No abstract

typically involving the use of solvents, is to soften the material, which facilitates deconstruction and conversion of biomass. At the atomic level this means softening the lignin by increasing its atomic fluctuations.Therefor understanding how the dynamics of lignin is modified by the solvent pretreatment could lead to a better understanding how to soften the material.To this end we have investigated the nanoscale dynamics of lignin in a melt with tetrahydrofuran (THF) as a water cosolvent using both molecular dynamics (MD) neutron spectroscopy. MD probes similar length-and timescales as quasi-elastic neutron scattering (QENS) so the neutron scattering profile can be calculated from the atomic positions in the simulation trajectories, thus results from MD and NS can be directly compared.