2023, Pérez, Alan, Roy, Yagnaseni, Rip, Constantijn, Kersten, Sascha R. A., Schuur, Boelo

The chemical pulping of wood chips using deep eutectic solvents (DES-pulping) has emerged as an alternative technology to conventional pulping in the paper industry, allowing the production of pulp in combination with the recovery of lignin and sugars for valorization. A challenge in the development of this technology is the understanding of how the operating conditions influence the crucial pulp manufacturing parameters such as delignification percentage, pulp yield, and fiber quality. This work is focused on investigating the effect of operating conditions such as cooking temperature, cooking time, liquor-to-wood ratio, initial water content on DES, type of mixing, the addition of a pre-treatment step (pre-impregnation of DES into the wood chips) to cooking process, and DES composition (lactic acid:choline chloride, lactic acid:sodium chloride, and lactic acid:sodium bromide) on the cooking of wood chips by DES. A shortcut quality evaluation parameter (Q), defined as the product of the fiber length and the degree of delignification quantified the quality of the pulping process in a single value, shows values similar to a reference unbleached kraft pulp for cooking at 130 °C in a range of cooking times from 3 to 4.5 h at a L/W of 10:1 by using lactic acid:choline chloride DES. More elaborate property analysis on the fibers showed that several of the the quality-indicating properties of the fibers (coarseness, shape factor, fibril area, and crill index) are comparable with typical sulfite pulping fibers.

2022, Pérez, Alan, Gössi, Angelo, Riedl, Wolfgang, Schuur, Boelo, Fontalvo, Javier, Thatoi, Hrudayanath, Mohapatra, Sonali, Das, Swagat Kumar

Nowadays, many fermentation chemicals are produced at an industrial scale. Numerous technological improvements have been developed and implemented to achieve high quality and quantity of fermentation products. However, several drawbacks in fermentation processes still limit their application at an industrial level. In situ product removal (ISPR) is a potential alternative to overcome the conventional drawbacks of the fermentative processes, increasing the fermentation's productivity and reducing the separation steps for recovery and purification. Currently, liquid extraction has emerged as a promising separation technology for ISPR, with immobilized liquids such as membrane-assisted extraction and microchannel liquid membrane, due to the high mass transfer rates, scalability, easy integration, and efficiency. This chapter will discuss these technologies regarding their integration into fermentative processes.

2021-06-09, Pérez, Alan, Fiskari, Juha, Schuur, Boelo

Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) are considered as a green and environmentally benign solvent class for various applications, including delignification of biomass. One of the major challenges in the delignification of biomass by DES is attributed to the limitations in mass transfer. By subjecting wood chips to a low-energy mechanical refining, i.e., the Asplund process, the accessible surface area increases greatly, which in turn improves the mass transfer and increases the reaction rate. In this research, the DES delignification of Asplund fibers made of Norway spruce was studied as a strategy to produce papermaking fibers under mild conditions. A DES consisting of lactic acid and choline chloride was used due to its proven performance in delignification. Various operational conditions, such as temperature, time, DES-to-wood ratio, and the type of stirring were studied. A novel parameter, Q, allowed to evaluate the impact of the operational conditions on the quality of the pulp in terms of delignification degree and fiber length. The results showed that cooking temperature had the most significant effect on the pulp quality. Additionally, it was observed that cooking times between 30 and 45 min result in a pulp yield of about 50%, while fibers have a lignin content of about 14% and a fiber length of 0.6 mm. These results demonstrate that it is possible to obtain fibers of relatively good quality from DES delignification using Asplund fibers as the starting material.