Commercial Use of Lignin-Based Materials

Utilizing biomass resources to synthesize water-absorbent resin has attracted global interest as a new research direction. Lignin, as the second most abundant renewable biopolymer in nature, is a strong candidate for use in renewable materials. In this study, water-absorbent resins were synthesized from lignosulfonate (LS) and acrylic acid (AA) by grafting copolymerization with an aqueous solution of potassium persulfate (KPS) as the initiator and N'N-methylene-bis-acrylamide (MBA) as a crosslinking agent. The optimum process parameters of lignosulfonate-graftedpolyacrylic acid resin (LS-PAA) were obtained via a single-factor method: AA 30 wt.%, LS 2.67 wt.% (to AA), cross-linker 0.03 wt.% (to AA), initiator 0.43 wt.% (to AA), and neutralization 65%. The optimum reaction temperature was 60 °C. Although lignin is a hydrophobic polymer, it has many reactive functional groups that can react with AA. It has been expected that adding lignins can change the cross-linking density by their three-dimensional structure, thus increasing the water absorbency. The LS-PAA resins were compared to other kinds of lignin derivatives including alkali lignin, lignocresol, lignoresorcinol, and lignopyrogallol under the same reaction conditions. The results showed that changing the types of lignin can change the resulting water absorbency. Lignopyrogallol-graftedpolyacrylic acid resin (LP-PAA) showed the highest water absorbency (2137 g/g).

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“…The structures of five lignin-related compounds are shown in Fig. 1 (Morck 1986;Gargulak and Lebo 2000;Ren and Funaoka 2007).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Polyacrylate-based Water-absorbent Hydrogels Prepared with Lignin-related Compounds: Process Conditions and Performance

et al. 2017

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“…Globally, approximately 50 million tons of lignin is produced annually, while lignin-derived products represent 1 to 2% of the world's lignin production and the remaining 98% is burned for energy or landfilled [14,[21][22][23][24]. Energy captures the most market volume, although it offers the lowest value-added opportunity [25].…”

Section: Lignin Valorizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Energy captures the most market volume, although it offers the lowest value-added opportunity [25]. Current lignin products can be segmented into several categories: binding agents, rheology control, dispersing agents, emulsion stabilizers, and retardants [21,24] (Fig. 1).…”

Section: Lignin Valorizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Opportunities for lignin valorization: an exploratory process

Cline

Smith

2017

Energ Sustain Soc

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Background: For decades, the pulp industry has struggled to create sustainable value-added opportunities for lignin, and the issue is now at the forefront of second-generation biorefinery research and development efforts. Our work presents a sequential process for examining potential lignin valorization. The chemical and physical properties of lignin cause issues in isolation, characterization, and standardization and, therefore, product manufacturing. First, a short list of high-opportunity lignin products was developed from the literature. Several low-hanging product opportunities were identified, from which, lignin-based powdered activated carbon (PAC) for the sequestration of mercury from power plant flue gas was selected for further examination due, in part, to lignin's similarity to lignite coal. Next, an analysis of the web-based written content of PAC suppliers' promotional materials was performed to assess the attributes on which PAC products are sold and purchased. Finally, potential electric generating power plant buyers/users of lignin-based PAC for mercury sequestration were surveyed to examine the importance of 16 PAC product and service attributes, identify potential entry barriers for a new PAC product, and assess the market opportunity for lignin-based PAC. Methods: This research deployed a multi-phase market analysis based process including: a PAC vendor content analysis; and survey techniques. Phase I analyzed web-based content of PAC vendors' promotional marketing literature tailored to power plant buyers/users for their PAC products. Phase II incorporated the Phase I results into an exploratory e-survey of select PAC buyers/users in the U.S. power generation industry. Combining these methods provides an exploratory market perspective on lignin valorization. Results: The top three product and service attributes for buyers/users of PAC for mercury mitigation were Product Reliability, Product Effectiveness, and Proven Product Performance; the top three barriers to entry for a new ligninbased PAC include Title V Permitting, Operational Impacts, and Compliance with Regulations. Buyers/users are undecided about trial testing a lignin-based PAC product. Conclusions: This paper provides a logical and systematic process for exploring new product opportunities in business-to-business markets and provides insights into the market potential for lignin-based PAC for mitigating mercury emissions from US electric generating power plants.

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“…Over the last 15-20 years, there has been an increasing amount of research (private and public) on the potential utilization of lignin (e.g., [48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60]). The P&P industry is-as are other primary process industries-energy intensive and uses large quantities of water and raw material input.…”

Section: By-product Innovation Potentialmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, Bozell et al [50] list a total of 50 utilizations that can be categorized into three groups: near-term opportunities (source for energy production e.g., power, fuel, syngas), mid-term opportunities (macromolecules e.g., binders, carbon fibers, polymers), and long term opportunities (aromatics and miscellaneous monomers e.g., BTX, phenol, vanillin). Currently, only a small amount of lignin (1-2%-which corresponds to an amount of 1 million tonnes per year worldwide) is isolated from black liquor and used commercially in a range of low-value products and activities relating to dispersing, adhesives, and aromatic chemicals such as vanillin [48,49,51,52,55]. This rather limited field of lignin application is the result of, on the one hand, technical constraints relating to its specific structure and reactivity [56], and, on the other hand, doubts concerning its economic viability.…”

Section: By-product Innovation Potentialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Front-End Innovation Decisions for Self-Organized Industrial Symbiosis Dynamics—A Case Study on Lignin Utilization

2017

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Abstract:The emergence of self-organized industrial symbiosis (IS) is based on the expectations of industrial actors regarding financial and/or environmental benefits through symbiotic inter-company linkages. One such linkage is the exchange of by-products as substitutes for primary raw materials. However, the company generating the by-product may even not be aware of potential application fields in other industries. In cases where the by-product triggers an innovation, the very early phase of the innovation process ("early front-end"-EFE) is extremely important, as it is here that a first rough picture of future application fields must be defined. In contrast to traditional market innovations of industries, the EFE of IS innovations is triggered by the existence of a certain by-product. As conventional innovation models are not very helpful in supporting the EFE decisions in IS innovations, our paper aims to establish a link between self-organized IS and innovation by creating a specific theoretical framework for the support of EFE decisions. We thus introduce the "stage-gate model of self-organized IS innovations" and place a particular emphasis on the early phases within this model. Subsequently, we illustrate the application of the early phases of the model in a case study on lignin utilization in the Austrian paper and pulp industry (P&P industry). In this way, the study contributes to a better understanding of the peculiarities and conditions of EFE decisions in IS innovations and their significance in the emergence of self-organized IS networks.

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Commercial Use of Lignin-Based Materials

Cited by 112 publications

References 0 publications

Polyacrylate-based Water-absorbent Hydrogels Prepared with Lignin-related Compounds: Process Conditions and Performance

Polyacrylate-based Water-absorbent Hydrogels Prepared with Lignin-related Compounds: Process Conditions and Performance

Opportunities for lignin valorization: an exploratory process

Early Front-End Innovation Decisions for Self-Organized Industrial Symbiosis Dynamics—A Case Study on Lignin Utilization

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