2^nd World Bioenergy Congress and Expo

Biography

Biography: Blake A. Simmons

Abstract

Ionic liquids (ILs), solvents composed entirely of paired ions, have been used in a wide variety of process chemistry and renewable energy applications. Imidazolium-based ILs show remarkable abilities to dissolve biomass, and are thus an ideal media for biomass pretreatment and depolymerization[1]. Although very efficient, imidazolium cations are currently expensive and therefore their large scale use and industrial deployment, e.g. in biorefineries, is limited[2]. In an attempt to replace imidazolium-based ILs with ILs derived from renewable sources that retain their efficiency for biomass pretreatment, we synthesized a series of tertiary amine based ILs from aromatic aldehydes derived from lignin and hemicellulose, the major byproducts of lignocellulosic biofuel production. A comprehensive analysis of extractable cell wall carbohydrates and sugar yields from switchgrass and switchgrass pretreated with tertiary amine based ILs derived from vanillin ([Van][H2PO4]), p-anisaldehyde ([p-AnisEt2NH][H2PO4]) and furfural ([FurEt2NH][H2PO4]) confirmed their effectiveness for biomass pretreatment. The amounts of sugar released by enzymatic hydrolysis of the cellulose present in switchgrass was comparable to that obtained after pretreatment with 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate ([C2C1Im][OAc]). Enzymatic saccharification with [FurEt2NH][H2PO4] and [p-AnisEt2NH][H2PO4] provided 90% and 96% of total possible glucose and 70% and 76% of total possible xylose, respectively, after biomass pretreatment[3]. Our concept of deriving ILs from lignocellulosic biomass shows significant potential for the realization of a “closed-loop” process for future lignocellulosic biorefineries, and has far-reaching economic impacts for other IL based process technology currently using ILs synthesized from non-renewable sources.