Catalytic Fractionation of Raw Biomass to Biochemicals and Organosolv Lignin in a Methyl Isobutyl Ketone/H₂O Biphasic System

Abstract

A biphasic system, consisting of methyl isobutyl ketone and H 2 O, has been achieved for a highly integrated one-pot catalytic transformation and delignification process of lignocellulosic biomass. Using SO 3 H-functionalized ionic liquids as catalysts, 85.8% of bagasse can be fractionated into 71.4% water-soluble chemicals at 76.3% lignin extraction ratio, under the optimized conditions. The practicability of this biphasic system for other typical biomass sources has also been tested with high efficiency, viz., 79.6 to 91.9% lignin extraction ratio of corncob, corn stalk, rice husk, and rice straw with 56.6 to 72.8% water-soluble chemicals yield at 64.8 to 81.3% feed conversion.

Acid Assisted Organosolv Delignification of Beechwood and Pulp Conversion towards High Concentrated Cellulosic Ethanol via High Gravity Enzymatic Hydrolysis and Fermentation

“…They attributed the lower efficiency of the mineral acids to their miscibility in MIBK, which resulted in a reduction of their actual concentration in the aqueous solution, lowering their catalytic efficiency. In our work, use of mineral acids in the case of MIBK increased the DD from 37.2% to 49.5%, which is in accordance to the findings by Teng et al [ 37 ]. Another interesting note is that in runs 3 and 4 where MIBK is used, there is a significant reduction of the hemicellulose that is retrieved in the solid pulp without H 2 SO 4 (19 wt.%) and with H 2 SO 4 (3.4 wt.%) when compared to EtOH (85.8 and 20.5 wt.%, respectively) and AC (70 and 13.6 wt.%, respectively).…”

“…Hence, the 50% delignification degree (DD) achieved, although low, is satisfactory enough to justify further investigation in future work. Teng et al [ 37 ] used the H 2 O/MIBK biphasic system successfully to delignify different biomasses such as corn cob and rice straw. They found that the use of acidic ionic liquids (IL) was significantly more efficient when compared to the use of mineral acids.…”

Manufacture of Platform Chemicals from Pine Wood Polysaccharides in Media Containing Acidic Ionic Liquids

“…Although most information dealing with the utilization of biphasic media for producing furans and/or organic acids has been reported for aqueous media supplemented with mineral acids, some studies dealing with ILs are available. Among the available solvents, MIBK is a preferred candidate due to its stability toward acids, medium polarity, lower toxicity, average boiling point, poor miscibility with water, good extraction ability for polar products [ 49 ], and green character [ 45 ]. For example, MIBK has been employed in the formulation of reaction media, or to separate the target products after reaction [ 49 , 50 , 73 ].…”

“…The catalysts employed in this study (1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium hydrogen sulfate, denoted [C4mim]HSO 4 , 1-(3-sulfopropyl)-3-methylimidazolium hydrogen sulfate, denoted [C3SO 3 Hmim]HSO 4 , and 1-(3-sulfobutyl)-3-methylimidazolium hydrogen sulfate, denoted [C4SO 3 Hmim]HSO 4 ]) are made up of the hydrogensulfate anion and an alkyl- or sulfoalkyl-imidazolium cation. All the AILs employed in this study have been employed for LB processing with diverse objectives [ 10 , 42 , 44 , 47 , 49 , 50 , 51 ]. It can be noted that pine wood processing in biphasic media using AILs as catalysts results in the simultaneous generation and separation of furfural (which appears in the organic phase), in the generation of organic acids of low acidity (which are distributed between the organic and aqueous phases), and in partial lignin breakdown (yielding MIBK-soluble lignin fragments).…”

Amine-Functionalized Sugarcane Bagasse: A Renewable Catalyst for Efficient Continuous Flow Knoevenagel Condensation Reaction at Room Temperature

“…It is an ideal renewable catalyst support for the fabrication of the solid catalyst through a simple amine silanization process. Herein, based on our previous studies on the utilization of the biomass resource [ 31 , 32 , 33 ], an amine-functionalized sugarcane bagasse, denoted as SCB-NH 2 , has been designed and utilized in the continuous flow Knoevenagel condensation reaction at room temperature. The Knoevenagel condensation between benzaldehyde and malononitrile was set as the model reaction in batch and flow reaction systems.…”