Swiss Research Discovers Way to Transform Lignin into Biofuel
(Biofuels International) Scientists at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale De Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have turned lignin into a source of biofuel by simply adding a common chemical. The patent-pending method that converts up to 80% of lignin into valuable molecules for biofuel and plastics and can be scaled up to industrial levels has been published in Science.
Lignin is an enormously complex biopolymer, filling the hard wall that surrounds each plant cell and making up almost a third of plant biomass.
Its molecular structure gives it an energy density 30% greater than that of the sugars that are traditionally processed into biofuel.
The problem is that lignin is difficult to extract and transform due to its instability as it usually gets rapidly destroyed during its extraction.
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The researchers found that formaldehyde stabilises lignin and prevents it from degrading, leading to three to seven times higher yields of building blocks that can be used to make substitutes for petrochemicals.
“Depending on the wood used, we get between 50 and 80%,” said Luterbacher, who became known in 2014 for developing a method for extracting sugars from plants safely and cheaply. READ MORE and MORE (iTech Post; includes VIDEO) and MORE (Science Daily) and MORE (Phys.Org) Abstract (Science Magazine)
