Useless Plant Part Found as Effective Biomass Source for Creating Sustainable Materials

Sustainable materials are the future of our planet, and it needs to be perfected as soon as possible to end the imminent threat of global warming and climate change. Many studies continuously attempt to discover and innovate potential solutions, such as bio-derived materials, against the problem. However, further research is needed to create and use them economically.

One example of bio-based material is an eco-friendly milk jug. If the milk contained in the material is sold higher due to the cost of the jug production, consumers will be hesitant to buy the product.

University of Delaware experts tried to solve the economic problem concerning the bio-material production and usage of the greater population. The team was led by material science, biomolecular, and chemical engineering expert Thomas Epps III and colleagues from the University of Delaware, and collaborators from the private research institute CanmetENERGY.

Lignin: Plant Waste as Effective Alternative for Creating Affordable Bio-Based Materials

(Photo: MIGUEL RIOPA/AFP via Getty Images)
A worker checked the biomass line at the Ence's plant in Pontevedra on December 16, 2015. Ence is Spain's market leader in producing renewable energy using forest biomass and energy crops co-generating the electricity and heat required for its industrial operations, and selling its surplus production to the national grid.

The goal of the research was to innovate biomass wastes into new products while keeping the balance of economic standards applicable to the consumers. The study focused on the usage of a botanical composition called lignin.

Lignin is a biological material that can be found in plants and trees. Although it functions during the life of floras, lignin becomes part of a massive waste emitted from pulp and paper production. Technical lignin is a type of biomass considered the most useless and probably the most contributor to waste in the industry. The only known function of technical lignins during post-production is to add up as fillers for burning other materials such as tires.

According to the authors, lignins are among the widely available biomass sources that can become valuable. Every year, almost 100 billion kilograms of technical lignins end up to waste from the global pulp and paper mills.

The examination included a series of development to make the lignins efficiently into high-quality plastics, valuable chemicals, and even bio-based 3D-printing resins. The authors believe that the link between economic standards and the life-cycle discovered from the research could also compete with other end-waste materials generated from petroleum-based products.

In a report by PhysOrg, Epps said that their study was the first and only attempt to generate biomass into something useful and efficient while keeping the entire process at moderate cost and with lower environmental impact than petroleum materials.

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Faster and Cost-Effective Production of Sustainable Products with Glycerin

Technical lignins are challenging and expensive to process, but the authors found that several chemicals could help to minimize the work significantly. The team replaced methanol, being a traditional deconstruction solvent, with glycerin. The process is comparable when the glycerin-based cycle is combined with ambient atmospheric pressure.

Glycerin is one of the most affordable chemicals commonly found as an ingredient to many household materials such as skincare and disinfecting products. With the dissolving capacity of glycerin, technical lignins could be crushed into microscopic materials that could be utilized for creating many bio-based essentials, including high-quality glass, plastics, fragrance, flavor, antioxidants, to name a few.

In conclusion, lignins could work with low vapor-pressure glycerin to speed up the effortless and sustainable process of generating a wide range of eco-friendly, cost-efficient, and cheap products, helping to halt the catastrophe we will face future. The study was published in the journal Science Advances, titled "Ambient-pressure lignin valorization to high-performance polymers by intensified reductive catalytic deconstruction."