Many valorization approaches for lignin rely on its organic solvent (organosolv) extraction. However, the severity of the extraction conditions required to obtain high lignin extraction generally results in low-quality lignin for downstream processing. To better understand the secondary reaction pathways and kinetics related to molecular alterations that result from organosolv extraction under extreme conditions, extractions were conducted at temperatures of 150, 180, and 210 °C. Lignin was collected at residence times between 0.25 and 18 h and analyzed by NMR techniques to quantify the concentrations of key chemical moieties that appear or disappear upon reactions of lignin molecules during and after their fractionation from biomass. The kinetics of chemical moiety evolution was modeled as processes in-series. In these models, pseudo first-order kinetics were used to describe the change in concentration of chemical moieties on extracted lignin as a function of residence time.
Keywords: NMR spectroscopy; hybrid poplar; kinetics; lignin; organosolv extraction.
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