Structural characterization and comparison of enzymatic and deep eutectic solvents isolated lignin from various green processes: Toward lignin valorization

Abstract

In this work, several representative green processes were developed to extract the enzymatic lignin and deep eutectic solvents (DESs) isolated lignin from corn straw. The results revealed that enzymatic lignin and DESs isolated lignin had a relatively low and homogeneous molecular weight and DESs isolated lignin shown a higher purity. Enzymatic and DESs isolated lignin showed good representativeness and similar to original herbal lignin structures accompany few aryl ether linkage cleavages and oxidation phenomenon. Among them, the subcritical CO2-assisted autohydrolysis and ChCl/Lac DESs treatment exhibited a higher severity for lignin preparation, and sequence DESs isolated lignin had a better reactivity. The β-O-4 ether bonds and carbon-carbon bonds linkage were further broken up during the Lac and DESs sequence treatment. In short, the described processes showed practical significance for lignin extraction and potential valorization, as well as help to develop more novel strategies for the current biorefinery process.