Most accessed paper in Green Chemistry

A paper by Professor Tom Welton & Drs Jason Hallett, Agnieszka Brandt & John Gräsvik is featured in issue 3, 2013 of Green Chemistry

The paper Deconstruction of lignocellulosic biomass with ionic liquids has now become Green Chemistry's number one most accessed article since March 2013.

Lignocellulose, the woody parts of plants, is the most abundant biomaterial on the planet. It is available in much larger quantities and at lower cost than edible plant part such as starch, vegetable oil or sucrose and hence a better feedstock for making large quantities of biomass-derived fuels and chemicals.

A major obstacle to lignocellulose utilisation is that cost-effective processing technologies are yet to be commercially developed. Research in the past 10 years has shown that ionic liquids could play an important role in this area. This paper reviews advances in the field, highlights future research challenges and discusses how a future ionic liquid process could look like.

It is divided into four parts:

1. gives background information on lignocellulosic biomass and ionic liquids

2. focuses on the solubility of lignocellulosic biomass (and the individual biopolymers within it) in ionic liquids

3. emphasises the deconstruction effects brought about by the use of ionic liquids as a solvent

4. deals with practical considerations regarding the design of ionic liquid based deconstruction processes.