RESEARCH ARTICLE


Miscanthus x giganteus as a Source Of Biobased Products Through Organosolv Fractionation: A Mini Review



Juan José Villaverde1, 2, Pablo Ligero1, Alberto de Vega1, *
1 Department of Physical Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of A Coruña, A Coruña 15071, Spain
2 Present address: CICECO and Department of Chemistry, University of Aveiro, Aveiro 3810-193, Portugal


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Creative Commons License
© 2010 Villaverde et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Physical Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of A Coruña, A Coruña 15071, Spain; Tel: +34 981167000 (2034); Fax: +34 981164065; E-mail: devega@udc.es


Abstract

This paper deals with the chemical treatments with selected organic compounds that have been applied to Miscanthus to upgrade it, for pulp production or fractionation purposes. Organosolv processes have demonstrated their effectiveness as fractionation treatments; therefore special emphasis is placed on these systems and, in particular, those making use of carboxylic acids. That is, Acetosolv process that uses acetic acid-water-hydrochloric acid mixtures as delignifying agents, the process with formic acid-water-hydrochloric acid and the Milox process, which replaces the hydrochloric acid in the medium by hydrogen peroxide, thus forming peroxyacetic acid. Furthermore, we present the results of the characterizations that have been made in relation to extractives and lignin of Miscanthus. It also is analyzed the major changes undergone by lignin during organosolv treatments. Finally, some progresses in the field of TCF bleaching of the cellulose pulps obtained are summarized.

Keywords: Miscanthus x giganteus, fractionation, organosolv, TCF bleaching, characterization.