Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
BACKGROUND: Future biorefineries will focus on converting low value waste streams to chemical products that are derived from petroleum or refined sugars. Feedstock pretreatment in a simple, cost effective, agnostic manner is a major challenge. METHODS: In this work, beechwood sawdust was delignified via an organosolv process, assisted by homogeneous inorganic acid catalysis. Mixtures of water and several organic solvents were evaluated for their performance. Specifically, ethanol (EtOH), acetone (AC), and methyl- isobutyl- ketone (MIBK) were tested with or without the use of homogeneous acid catalysis employing sulfuric, phosphoric, and oxalic acids under relatively mild temperature of 175 °C for one hour. RESULTS: %. CONCLUSIONS: Efficient delignification combining common volatile solvents and mild acid catalysis allowed for the production of ethanol at high concentration in an efficient manner.
Kalogiannis et al. (Thu,) studied this question.