Eucalyptus lignin valorisation for advanced materials and carbon fibres
Natural resources are being exhausted due to the great demand of their services and the insufficient actions taken for their preservation. Against this background, the use of waste components from industrial activities as raw materials to obtain high value-added products is of great relevance.
Lignin from pulping process is present all over Europe and represents a big source of underexploited material. There is an estimated 70 million tonnes of lignin available from pulping processes worldwide, but much of this is not isolated but burned onsite to provide steam for heat and power production. Until now only about 2% of the lignins available in the pulp and paper industry is commercially used comprising of about 1,000,000 tons/year lignosulphonates originating from sulphite pulping and 104,000 tons/year of kraft lignins produced in the kraft process