The general need to slow the depletion of fossil resources and reduce carbon footprints has led to tremendous effort being invested in creating "greener" industrial processes and developing alternative means to produce fuels and synthesize platform chemicals. This work aims to design a microwave-assisted cascade process for a full biomass valorisation cycle. GVL (γ-valerolactone), a renewable g...

Environmental regulations coupled to market pressures have forced the pulp and paper industry to explore alternatives to chlorine based bleaching practices for the production of bleached kraft pulp.Various technologies and bleaching chemicals have been suggested as answers to kraft pulp bleaching concerns, from which oxygen, ozone and peroxides are the leading candidates for chlorine replacemen...

Alkaline peroxide delignification of rye straw has been first investigated in this paper. The results showed that treatment of dewaxed and water-extracted rye straw with 2% H2O2 at pH 11.5 for 12 h at 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, and 70°C resulted in a dissolution of 52.7, 75.7, 81.8, 83.1, 85.8, and 87.8% of the original lignin, and 44.2, 52.5, 70.0, 70.0, 71.3, and 71.9% of the original hemicelluloses...

In this study, multifunctional alkaline pulping was suggested to produce different pulp grades at one mill site, ranging from high-yield paper pulp to high-purity dissolving pulp. In all process modifications, sulfur was successfully replaced by anthraquinone. Autohydrolysis and alkaline pre-extraction were applied to Eucalyptus globulus wood chips, followed by kraft and soda-AQ pulping. Alkali...

Three switchgrass cultivars (‘Performer’, ‘BoMaster’, and ‘Colony’ switchgrass) were delignified using NaOH at varying concentrations and residence times at 121 C for improved sugar production in enzymatic hydrolysis. Because of its greater carbohydrate/lignin ratio and the more substantial lignin reduction upon alkaline attack, ‘Performer’ switchgrass gave greater sugar productions under all t...

HYDROGEN PEROXIDE HAS ALWAYS been a technologically attractive oxidant to the pulp and paper industry, with its significance becoming increasingly important as environmental regulations become more stringent. Beyond its ease of handling and application, hydrogen peroxide is also a versatile and benign compound whose decomposition products are water and oxygen. Among its major drawbacks are its ...