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Biofuels and Biorefineries 9
Zhen Fang
Richard L. Smith, Jr.
Xiao-Fei Tian Editors
Production of
Materials from
Sustainable
Biomass
Resources
Biofuels and Biorefineries
Volume 9
Editors-in-Chief:
Professor Zhen Fang, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China
Series Description
Annual global biomass production is about 220 billion dry tons or 4,500 EJ,
equivalent to 8.3 times the world’s energy consumption in 2014 (543 EJ). On the
other hand, world-proven oil reserves at the end of 2011 reached 1652.6 billion
barrels, which can only meet just over 50 years of global production. Therefore,
alternative resources are needed to both supplement and replace fossil oils as the
raw material for transportation fuels, chemicals, and materials in petroleum-based
industries. Renewable biomass is a likely candidate because it is prevalent over the
Earth and is readily converted to other products. Compared with coal, some of the
advantages of biomass are (i) its carbon-neutral and sustainable nature when
properly managed, (ii) its reactivity in biological conversion processes, (iii) its
potential to produce bio-oil (ca. yields of 75%) by fast pyrolysis because of its high
oxygen content, (iv) its low sulfur and lack of undesirable contaminants (e.g.,
metals, nitrogen content), (v) its wide geographical distribution, and (vi) its potential
for creating jobs and industries in energy crop productions and conversion plants.
Many researchers, governments, research institutions, and industries are developing
projects for converting biomass, including forest woody and herbaceous biomass,
into chemicals, biofuels, and materials, and the race is on for creating new
“biorefinery” processes needed for future economies. The development of
biorefineries will create remarkable opportunities for the forestry sector,
biotechnology, materials, and the chemical processing industry and stimulate
advances in agriculture. It will help to create a sustainable society and industries
that use renewable and carbon-neutral resources.
Production of Materials
from Sustainable Biomass
Resources
Editors
Zhen Fang Richard L. Smith, Jr.
College of Engineering Graduate School of Environmental Studies,
Nanjing Agricultural University Department of Chemical Engineering,
Nanjing, China Research Center of Supercritical Fluid
Technology
Xiao-Fei Tian Tohoku University
School of Biology and Biological Sendai, Japan
Engineering
South China University of Technology
Guangzhou, China
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721,
Singapore
Preface
v
vi Preface
The text should be of interest to professionals in academia and industry who are
working in the fields of natural renewable materials, biorefinery of lignocellulose,
biofuels, and environmental engineering. It can also be used as comprehensive ref-
erences for university students with background in chemical engineering, material
science, and environmental engineering.
First and foremost, we would like to cordially thank all the contributing authors for
their great efforts in writing and revising the chapters and insuring the reliability of
information given in their chapters. Their contributions have really made this proj-
ect realizable.
Apart from the efforts of the authors, we would also like to acknowledge the
individuals listed below for carefully reading the book chapters and giving many
constructive comments that significantly improved the quality of the chapters:
Prof. E.J. “Ben” Anthony, Cranfield University, UK
Dr. Ing. Marco Barbanera, Università degli Studi di Perugia, Italy
Dr. Marc Borrega, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, Finland
Dr. Pedro Castaño, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Spain
Dr. Greta Faccio, Empa Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science &
Technology, Switzerland
Prof. Dr. Anton Friedl, Technische Universität Wien (TU Wien), Austria
Mr. Stefan Frodeson, Karlstad University, Sweden
Prof. Thomas Heinze, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Germany
Prof. Fang Huang, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, China
Mr. Fohr Jarno, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland
Prof. Charles Q. Jia, University of Toronto, Canada
Dr. Junhua Jiang, Idaho National Laboratory, USA
Dr. Andreas Koschella, Universität Jena, Germany
Dr. Konstantina Kourmentza, University of Reading, UK
Prof. Richard A Larson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Dr. Seung Woo Lee, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Dr. James McGregor, The University of Sheffield, UK
Prof. Emilia Morallon, Universidad de Alicante, Spain
Dr. Oleksandr Nechyporchuk, Swerea IVF; Chalmers University of Technology,
Sweden
Dr. Ioanna G. Ntaikou, Foundation for Research and Technology, Hellas (FORTH/
ICE-HT), Greece
ix
x Acknowledgments
Richard L. Smith, Jr., October 18, 2018 in Sendai (Richard L. Smith, Jr.)
xi
xii Contents
Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 391
Contributors
xiii
xiv Contributors
xvii
xviii About the Editors
Gen-Que Fu, Ya-Jie Hu, Jing Bian, Ming-Fei Li, Feng Peng,
and Run-Cang Sun
Abstract There is great interest in replacing fossil fuel resources with renewable
raw materials. Widely distributed lignocellulosic biomass is viewed as a potential
candidate to address energy and environmental demands. In this chapter, the use of
the hemicellulose component of lignocellulosic biomass, xylan, is considered. Due
to the presence of ester and ether lignin-carbohydrate linkages, extraction of xylan
is generally restricted to cell wall matrices of wood and lignified grass. Many extrac-
tion methods of xylan have been proposed, however, the subsequent purification
and analyses are needed on its fine structure. An effective way to modify xylan with
advanced properties is through etherification. This chapter points out new function-
alities, for example, thermoplasticity, hydrophobicity, conductivity, and stimuli-
responsiveness of xylan by chemical modification and it summarize recent reports
on xylan, including extraction, purification, chemical components, structural fea-
tures, and functional properties. Xylan derivatives, xylan-based materials, and their
potential applications are discussed and future research areas are highlighted.
1.1 Introduction
Demand for energy is high worldwide and with the instability of oil resources and
concerns about global climate change, initiatives have been issued for alternative
energy development that can replace fossil fuels. Consequently, much interest exists
in developing alternative fuels and sources of chemicals. For creation of a sustain-
able society, renewable feed stocks must be used in the production of life necessi-
ties. Presently, lignocellulosic biomass provides numerous industrial and non-food
consumer products for society, including materials, chemicals, and fuels. However,
every year, there are many biomass residues produced in agriculture that are treated
OH
OH OH
4 6 OH
5 O 4 5 O 4 6
5 O
HO 1 1 HO
HO OH 1 OH
2 2 HO
3 OH 3 OH 2
3
HO OH
O
2 3 6
4 1 O
OH OH 1 4 5
HO
5 OH
4 6 HO
5 O O HO OH
HO 3 2
HO 1 OH
2 OH
3 OH
as wastes and used inefficiently. Wastes cause many problems related to space,
release of greenhouse gases such as methane and contamination with chemicals
such as dioxins [1]. Renewable and abundant lignocellulosic biomass is regarded as
a sustainable resource and since it is widely distributed in nature, it can be used to
produce fuels and necessary chemicals [2]. Cellulose, lignin, and hemicelluloses are
well known as the major constituents of lignocellulosic biomass [3]. Up to now,
cellulose and lignin are being used for commercial applications, while the hemicel-
lulose constituent of biomass has practically no commercial application. As an
enormous biopolymer resource, hemicelluloses have a wide variety of structural
types and consist of main sugar units including xylose, mannose, D-glucose, galac-
tose, arabinose, and glucuronic acid as shown in Fig. 1.1. The β-(1→4)-D-
xylopyranose is the basic structure unit of xylan, and the 2- or 3- position is randomly
substituted with side groups. Gradually, researchers have focused more on xylan to
make progress on its application to the food and non-food fields. Xylan has been
studied in many fields and some of its promising properties are documented in
reviews [4–10].
The structure diversity of xylan affects its functionality [11]. Generally, xylan can
be divided into several parts according to its primary structure in plant tissues:
homoxylans and glucuronoxylan (GX), arabinoglucuronoxylan (AGX), glucurono-
arabinoxylan (GAX), arabinoxylan (AX) and heteroxylan [12].
1 Isolation, Purification, and Potential Applications of Xylan 5
OH 3 OH OH
2
O O 1 O O
HO HO HO
O 5 O O
4
(a)
HO HO
1 3
2 O
O O OH OH
OH O O
O O 5 4
HO
(b)
Fig. 1.2 Structural conformations of homoxylan, (a) β-(1→3)-D-xylan; (b) β-(1→3 and
1→4)-D-xylan
1.2.1 Homoxylan
O
OH
HOH2C
HO 5 OH O
O OH O 1 O OH
O O O
O 3 O
4 2
O O
O OH
OH
HOH2C
HOH2C OH
OH
(a)
HO HO
5 1
O OH O O OH
O OH O
O 3 O
4 2
O
O
OH
HOH2C
OH
(b)
HO 1 HO
5
O OH O O OH
O OH O
O 3 O
4 2
O
HO
OH
MeO
O
COOH
position 2 (Fig. 1.4). The polysaccharide framework consists of around 200 β-D-
Xylp residues. Some xylose units only carry a single and terminal side chain of
glucuronic acid residue at position 2 [23]. Teleman et al. [24] extracted hemicellu-
loses from birch and beech by dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO). Through NMR analy-
sis, they found that the main constituent is O-acetyl-(4-O-methylglucurono)-xylan
containing one 4-O-MeGlcA substituent for approximately every 15 D-xylose resi-
dues. Mais et al. [25] found that the main hemicellulose in hardwood pulp is
4-O-methylglucurono-xylan with a 4-O-MeGlcA: Xyl ratio of 5:100 at maximum.
1 Isolation, Purification, and Potential Applications of Xylan 7
COOH
O
MeO
OH
HO
HO 1 O
5 3
2
O OH O O 1 OH
O O O
O 3 O 5
4O 2 4
O
O OH
OH
HOH2C
HOH2C OH
OH
In daily life, xylan is used in cosmetics and shaving creams, while it also found in
wood meal, forest chips, and plant crops. Xylan can be extracted directly from
plants or it can be obtained as a by-product in wood and agriculture processing.
Xylan occurs in sources of oligomers or mono sugars from degradation of
8 G.-Q. Fu et al.
Hemicelluloses are interconnected with other cell wall components via covalent
linkages and hydrogen bonds. Alkaline treatment is a commonly used method to
destroy the covalent link or H-bond between hemicelluloses and some other compo-
nents such as cellulose, lignin, and silica. On the other hand, cellulose swells with
alkali treatment and its crystallinity decreases [30]. Yields of hemicellulose are
influenced by the type of alkali used in the isolation process. NaOH and KOH are
both recommended because they are effective to obtain a high yields of xylan, and
NaOH is better than KOH for the same concentration, but KOH-extracted fractions
tend to have higher purity [31–34]. On the other hand, Ca(OH)2 can be used to
extract xylan, but the obtained xylan fraction has low solubility in water. It has been
reported that Ba(OH)2 is effective in the fractional extraction of AX from some
crops [18, 35–37]. Hutterer et al. [38] found that xylan is effectively fractionated by
alkaline treatment in the study of hardwood kraft pulps. In their work, uronic acid
was marked with fluorescencing compounds, and this indicated that a large amount
of uronic acid in the cellulosic fraction was separated as the alkalinity increased
during pulp treatment. In the work of Singh et al., an alkali extraction method with
two-stages was evaluated [39]. In the first stage, the xylan obtained was from canut
husk, which was treated with 10% NaOH for 8 h at 65 °C, and then with hydrother-
mal treatment for the second-step. About 40–52% of the available xylan was
obtained in the first step, and the overall xylan recovery was more than 90%.
Arumugam et al. [40] conducted one and two-step alkaline-extractions of peanut
shell. On the basis of characterization by NMR and MALDI ToF MS analysis, the
extracted hemicelluloses were mainly GX, which was similar to a hardwood GX,
with a high degree of substitution of the main chain with 4-O-methyl-D-
glucuronicxylan acid (Xyl: MeGlcA ratio ~6–7).
Organic solvent extraction of biomass preserve the structure of xylan, such as its
acetyl groups. Some organic solvents including alcohols or organic acids are con-
sidered to be neutral solvents for xylan due to the process of extracting xylan
1 Isolation, Purification, and Potential Applications of Xylan 9
without major alteration or degradation of its native structure [41, 42]. Researchers
found that the proportion of DMSO-extracted xylan husk of sorghum grain was
about 24% of the total lignocellulosic content, and the extracts were highly branched
AX, and had negative specific optical rotations [43]. DMSO/LiCl system has also
been used to extract xylan from vegetables or fruits, and relatively fine structures
were obtained [44]. Fu et al. [45] compared properties of DMSO and NaOH extract-
able hemicelluloses from Neosinocalamus affinis and found that ethanol precipita-
tion was effective after extraction with NaOH, but that ethanol precipitation could
not separate the fraction with different degrees of branching for DMSO-extracted
hemicellulose (main component, xylan). However, DMSO-extracted fractions had
fine structures of 4-O-methyl-glucuronoarabinoxylans with acetyl substitution at
C-2, C-3.
xylose recovery, lignin removal and total sugar yield were improved by this flow-
through hydrothermal system when compared with the batch hydrothermal process.
The maximum sugar yield was 84% with the optimum conditions being 200 °C for
10 min at a flow rate of 160 mL/min.
Ultrasonic irradiation during the separation of plant material with a solvent can
significantly improve the extraction of polysaccharides, in particular, the extraction
of low molecular weight substances [64–66]. With ultrasonic treatment, the swell-
ing and hydration of cell walls in biomass promote diffusion and mass transfer
[67–69]. It has been shown that the ultrasonic treatment is applicable to xylan [70].
Under ultrasonic conditions, no substantial changes in the structural and molecular
properties of the corn cob and corn shell xylan are detected [71].
Researchers are using subcritical or supercritical fluids, with or without the use of
catalysts, to remove hemicellulose from biomass. Microwave hot water extraction
of arabinoxylans, galactomannans, arabinogalactans and mannans from hops grains
(BSG) and waste coffee grounds (SCG) has been proposed [72–74]. The results
1 Isolation, Purification, and Potential Applications of Xylan 11
confirm that hot water extraction is an effective technique for the quantitative recov-
ery of xylan from BSG and SCG. Subcritical CO2 is also popular for the pretreat-
ment for extraction of xylan. Researchers [75] studied CO2-assisted autohydrolysis
of wheat straw and found that the initial formation of carbonic acid resulted in high
dissolution of xylose and xylooligosaccharides. In addition, CO2-assisted autohy-
drolysis towards elevated xylooligosaccharides at elevated levels under very severe
conditions has been proposed.
Ionic liquids (ILs) are non-volatile and green solvents that dissolve lignocellulosic
materials under mild conditions and they also have applications as pretreatment
solvents [12, 76, 77]. Due to the dual ionic and organic properties of ILs, the intrac-
tability of biomass is effectively reduced, so that they can be better processed in
other solvent systems [78, 79]. Imidazolium-based ILs such as 1-ethyl-3-
methylimidazolium acetate [C2C1Im][OAc] is well known to be effective at reduc-
ing biomass recalcitrance by disrupting the lignin-carbohydrate complex and
increasing the accessibility of the cellulose to saccharification. New types of ILs,
bio-derived cholinium ILs, are regarded as promising solvents to improve the bio-
compatibility [80–83]. Wang et al. [84] compared imidazolium-based ILs with dif-
ferent anionic constituents ([HSO4]−, [Cl]−, [MeCO2]−) in pretreatment of hardwood.
The acidity of [HSO4]− caused extensive hydrolysis of xylan, which facilitated pre-
treatment of xylan-rich hardwood. Half or more of the xylan in materials can be
dissolved in [C4C1im][HSO4], but many of the products were recovered as xylose or
xylooligosaccharides. Payal et al. [85] studied the dissolving mechanism of xylan in
ILs with molecular simulation. They found that inter- and intramolecular hydrogen
bonding are important in the dissolution processes and that complexes of xylan with
the ions of the ionic liquid were stable with large negative binding energies ranging
between −21 and −55 kcal/mol−1. Fewer number of hydroxyl groups in xylan would
not affect the number of cations present in its first solvation shell while the number
of anions would be reduced.
As a potential extraction method with ideal physical and chemical properties, deep
eutectic solvents (DESs) were introduced for fractionation of lignocellulosic frac-
tions [86]. DESs have attracted interest in dissolving polysaccharides such as cel-
lulose, xylose, arabinose, starch and chitin, and they are regarded as alternatives to
ILs [87]. In comparison with conventional solvents, DESs are easy to synthesize,
renewable in nature, cost-effective, biocompatible and biodegradable [88]. Usually,
there are two components in a DES solvent system: one component is a hydrogen
12 G.-Q. Fu et al.
bond acceptor and the other component is a hydrogen bond donor. Table 1.1 shows
a classification of DESs [89]. Morais et al. [90] used DESs (choline chloride and
urea or acetic acid) as solvents to extract hardwood xylan. The yield of solubiliza-
tion of xylan was 328.23 g/L under conditions of using 66.7 wt% DES in water at
80 °C. They also found that 4-O-methyl groups were eliminated from the
4-O-methylglucuronic acids moieties and uronic acids (15%) were cleaved from the
xylan backbone during this process. In the works of Agrawal et al. [91], about 80%
hemicelluloses were hydrolyzed into monosaccharides including xylose, arabinose,
mannose, and galactose above 120 °C and acidic pH (~1.5 to 2) in less than 30 min.
A big disadvantage of DESs is the high viscosity, thus, further research needs to
focus in developing DESs with favorable transport properties so that applications on
an industrial scale can be realized [92].
Extracted xylan cannot be used directly because the product normally contains con-
taminants. Thus, fractions need further purification to meet the specifications
required for a chemical product. Some hemicelluloses combine with lignin through
1 Isolation, Purification, and Potential Applications of Xylan 13
In continuous and exploratory experiments, it has been found that ethanol is a good
anti-solvent for some hemicelluloses, so that it can be applied to the separation and
purification of hemicellulose polysaccharides. Similarly, acetone, methanol, and
other organic solvents also have similar properties to ethanol for this purpose [96].
Graded ethanol precipitation has been successfully used as an evaluation tool for
xylan purification. It has been reported that, the less branched hemicelluloses with
large molecules can be precipitated by ethanol with low concentration, while with
an increase in ethanol concentration, more branched hemicelluloses with low
molecular weights are obtained [3, 97–101]. Compared with other purification
methods, fractionated ethanol precipitation has several advantages such as high effi-
ciency, low-cost, simple operation, and ethanol recovery.
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