Kristine Meile

Latvian State institute of Wood chemistry · Laboratory of Biorefinery

Pyrolysis is a recognized technology for lignocellulose conversion into bio‐based fuels, materials and chemicals. In this work, pyrolysis liquids were obtained by fast pyrolysis of wood after pre‐treatment with diluted sulfuric acid. The pyrolysis liquids were separated by solid phase extraction with an anion exchange resin Lewatit VPOC 1074 as the...

Fast pyrolysis of pre-treated lignocellulose gives a high yield of levoglucosan and other anhydrosugars, which are considered as the main product. However, the chemical composition of the liquid pyrolysis products is a complex mixture of hundreds of individual compounds. To implement the biorefinery principles, it is important to find applications...

This study aimed to selectively determine the main products of the pyrolysis of pre-treated lignocellulosic biomass, namely, two structural isomers of 1,6-anhydro-β-D-glucose (AG) – its pyranose (levoglucosan, LG) and furanose (AGF) forms. The influence of AGF on the iodometric titration of LG was evaluated. The presence of AGF had a clear impact o...

An attempt to reduce, replace, or even eliminate the synthetic resins from wood-based panels alongside broadening the array of raw lignocellulosics is still essential and attractive. Many pretreatments of lignocellulosics have been studied, among which steam explosion (SE) resulted in superior physical-mechanical properties of the obtained binder-l...

This study aims to characterize and valorize hemp residual biomass by a slow pyrolysis process. The volatile by-products of hemp carbonization were characterized by several methods (TGA, UV-VIS, TLC, Flash Prep-LC, UHPLC, QTOF-MS) to understand the pyrolysis reaction mechanisms and to identify the chemical products produced during the process. The...

Compiled by Kristine Meile and Arnis Kokorevics. Contain 48 abstracts.

Honey can easily be adulterated with various cheaper sweeteners for higher commercial profits. Commonly used adulterants include high fructose maize syrup and refined cane sugar, which origin is C4 plants. Isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) can be used to determine the adulteration of honey with C4 plants. A significant δ13C value difference be...

Global sustainability challenges prompt the world to modify its strategies and shift from a fossil-fuel-based economy to a bio-resources-based one and to the production of renewable biomass chemicals. Depolymerized suberinic acids (SA) were considered as an alternative resource to develop bio-polyols that can be further used in polyurethane (PU) ma...

In this study different pathways for obtaining activated carbon with catalytical activity were analysed. Industrially fast pyrolysis is an efficient way of lignocellulosic biomass processing, since in this process various important high value chemicals are obtained. Biochar is obtained as the by-product in fast pyrolysis process from which activate...

Global challenges prompt the world to modify its strategies and shift from a fossil-fuel-based economy to a bio-resource-based one with the production of renewable biomass chemicals. Different processes exist that allow the transformation of raw biomass into desirable bio-based products and/or energy. In this work different biochars that were obtai...

Within the valorisation of lignocellulosic biomass, it is important not only to isolate the dominant compounds, but also to extract and purify the by-products. In this study, birch (Betula pendula) chips were used as feedstock in fast pyrolysis to obtain and purify levoglucosenone. Levoglucosenone was isolated by distillation, but the residual by-p...

Levoglucosenone or LGO is biomass based chemical and its applications have been established; therefore developing dependable and fast analytical methods for determining LGO in the products of thermochemical biomass processing is of great importance.

Due to the ever increasing demand for energy resources, more and more attention is being paid to renewable energy resources. One such potential resource is lignocellulosic biomass that can be treated to acquire a carbohydrate rich substrate for further use in producing biofuels such as bioethanol or biobutanol. In this study, birch (Betula pendula)...

This research is dedicated to the study on the formation of levoglucosenone and other main volatiles from the catalytic pyrolysis with the addition of phosphoric acid of birch wood and lignocelluloses obtained by birch wood hydrothermal treatment. Py-GC/MS/FID method was used to evaluate the contents of the main products. Lignocelluloses were found...

This study aims to evaluate the possibilities of the production of anhydrosugar rich bio-oil by fast pyrolysis. Industrial hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) shives were used as the raw material for the study. Hemicelluloses were converted to furfural by catalytic hydrothermal pretreatment, while the left-over lignocellulose (LC) was subjected to analytical...

The depletion of fossil resources and concerns about the environment encourage the search for renewable biomass-based chemicals with broad applications. Levoglucosenone (LGO) is a carbohydrate derivative obtained by the pyrolysis of cellulose containing raw materials. Because of its two chiral centres LGO is particularly appealing to the organic sy...

Replacing fossil resources with biomass for the production of chemicals is another step closer to a sustainable bio-economy. To make the production of biomass based chemicals economically feasible, several valuable products need to be obtained from a single feedstock in a bio-refinery. In our work the pyrolysis products obtained from wood are explo...

Autohydrolysis of birch wood is a mild pretreatment process, which gives a notable yield of sugars -monosaccharides and oligosaccharides -in the aqueous hydrolysate, while a solid lignocellulose fraction can be further processed into other valuable products within a biorefinery concept. In this work two analytical methods -iodometric titration and...

It is important to analyze pyrolysis liquids to evaluate the yield of valuable products, as well as unfavorable by-products. This work focuses on choosing detectors for reversed phase UPLC analysis of pyrolysis liquids. The linearity, sensitivity, precision and recovery of photodiode array (PDA) detector, single quadrupole mass spectrometer (MS) an...

Hydrothermal treatment of wood is an integral part of a modern biorefinery concept. Our research is devoted to the study of properties of birch wood and lignocelluloses at its base after hydrothermal treatment at various temperatures using TG and Py-GC/FID/MS. It was found that treatment in temperature range 150-200. °C led to increase of the conte...

Automated preparative scale solid phase extraction (SPE) has been used to separate levoglucosan – a valuable platform chemical from the liquid products of wood pyrolysis. The sorbent for SPE was a strongly basic anion exchange resin in OH-form. Separation of levoglucosan could be done with water as the eluent, the regeneration of the resin was done...

Commercially, furfural is produced from pentosan-rich biomass using mineral acids as homogeneous catalysts. This study investigated a novel hydrolysis method that allows to obtain furfural from hemp shives with high yield and also to preserve the cellulose in the remaining biomass for other bioconversion processes. To date, hemp shives have not bee...

The objective of the study was to investigate the preliminary technological parameters for obtaining furfural and binder-less panels depending on hydrothermal pre-treatment temperature, steam explosion treatment and pressing conditions. If the pretreatment temperatures were 160–180 °C and the time 90 min, the yield of furfural was 64.8–67.2 % from...

Due to their high amount of pentosans, hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) shives are suitable for the production of furfural-a platform chemical. However, after the catalytic hydrothermal pre-treatment process, 60-85 wt% of lignocellulose (LC) is leftover, which also requires a rational utilization to realize the biorefinery concept. In this study, the poly...

In Latvia industrial hemp cultivation is rapidly growing. A study of binderless panel made from hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) shives after hydrothermal pretreatment and steam explosion treatment is reported. The acoustic properties of the panels were determined by means of the sound absorption coefficient (αw) determined according to standards ISO 1053...

Pre-treatment of wood is a substantially important stage to make its components more accessible for conversion to valuable products. The goal of this study was to investigate the mild hydrolysis pre-treatment of birch (Betula pendula) wood for improving the cellulosic part accessible to pyrolysis for obtaining anhydrosugars. Lignocellulose (LC) was...

Since cellulose and hemicelluloses along with lignin are the main components of biomass, fast pyrolysis of wood yields a complex mixture of products, among which sugars and anhydrosugars are one of the most abundant and valuable components. Because of the presence of high molecular compounds, this sugar mixture of pyrolysis products has proven to b...

Periodate oxidation of carbohydrates in acid, neutral and alkaline media has been studied, in order to develop a simple and fast determination method of sugars and their derivatives, such as levoglucosan, in fast pyrolysis liquids. The carbohydrates oxidized are as follows – d-glucose, d-cellobiose, d-cellotriose, d-fructose, d-sucrose and levogluc...

Biomass, such as wood, is an important renewable raw material for the production of various products. Since one of the main constituents of wood is cellulose, a polysaccharide, fast pyrolysis of wood yields liquid products with a noteworthy content of sugars. The purpose of the present study was to develop a method for the chromatographic separatio...

The production of valuable chemicals from biomass is an integral part in the way to substitute fossil raw materials and promote the development of a bio-based society. For different reasons, progress in this field today is not sufficient, especially concerning the pyrolytic processing methods. Pyrolysis of lignocellulosic (LC) materials like wood i...