environmental-green-chemistry-2017-keynote

Volume 3, Issue 2 (Suppl)

Trends in Green chem

ISSN: 2471-9889

Environmental & Green Chemistry 2017

July 24-26, 2017

Page 15

International Conference on

July 24-26, 2017 Rome, Italy

Green Chemistry and Technology

Environmental Chemistry and Engineering

Valorizing lignin

he advent of commercial cellulosic ethanol production facilities globally, has brought to the forefront the need to address

lignin valorization technologies. (1) Historically, the kraft pulp and paper industry addressed lignin generation issues by

developing advanced combustion technologies to recover energy and cooking chemicals. But even this industry has begun to

implement lignin recovery technologies and examine the use of lignin for material and chemical applications. (2) In the biofuel

industry, lignin represents ~15-30% of the starting material and currently the only practical solution is combustion and yet this

provides limited value while incurring high capital costs. Since lignin, is nature’s primary polyaromatic bioresource it is clear

that better solutions are needed. The historical challenges to utilization of lignin are several folds including variation of structure

due to feedstock, broad variations in molecular weight and functionality and alterations in structure due to process isolation

technologies. Currently, several of these are now being resolved, analytical advances facilitate precise determination of structure,

lignin fractionation technologies provide control of the structure of lignin and novel catalytic conversion methodologies are

being developed. (3) Our research studies have identified fractionation/pretreatments that predispose lignin for oleaginous

organisms that utilize lignin to biosynthesize lipids which are a natural resource for biodiesel. (4) Likewise, lignin can be used

for material applications and one of the promising routes is for green insulation as a lignin-based polyurethane foam. In this

presentation we will examine these two conversion technologies and how they complement each other and how advances in

lignin analytical chemistry help guide our conversion chemistry.

Figure 1:

Native Softwood Lignin

Biography

Arthur Ragauskas held the first Fulbright Chair in Alternative Energy and is a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Academy

of Wood Science and TAPPI. In 2014, he assumed a Governor’s Chair for Biorefining based in University of Tennessee’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular En-

gineering, with a complementary appointment in the UT Institute of Agriculture’s Department of Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries. He serves in the US Energy and Environ-

mental Sciences Directorate, Biosciences Division, at ORNL. His research program is directed at understanding and exploiting innovative sustainable bioresources. This

multifaceted program is targeted to develop new and improved applications for nature’s premiere renewable biopolymers for biofuels, biopower, and bio-based materials

and chemicals.

aragausk@utk.edu

Arthur Ragauskas

The University of Tennessee, USA

Arthur Ragauskas, Trends in Green chem, 3:2

DOI: 10.21767/2471-9889-C1-001