Size-Exclusion Chromatographic Study of Humic-Like Substances from Oxidized Lignin

摘要

Biorefineries will receive and process massive amounts of lignin. For this reason, how lignin can be best used to support the economic health of the biorefinery must be defined. Different strategies for obtaining lignin-based value added products have been recently reviewed (1). Derivatization of lignin macromolecules have been proposed as one of the most promising approaches to obtain new products. Given that lignin is a cross-linked natural polymer composed of phenylpropanoid units (2), one of its promising transformations might be oxidation to humic-like substances (HLS). Humic substances are known to possess substantial biological activity (3). Hence, the HLS produced by lignin oxidation can start a new value chain of the lignin-based byproducts. The important issue in establishing new products is developing quality control techniques. Size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) is a powerful technique traditionally used for quality control of HS (3-5). This technique was also applied to analyse native lignin (6).