EditorialChemicals, Materials, and Catalysts from NaturalRenewable Lignocelluloses

Xiaofei Tian ,1 Xuebing Zhao ,2 Zhibin He,3 and Shanghuan Feng4

1School of Biology and Biological Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China2Department of Chemical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China3Limerick Pulp and Paper Centre, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada E3B 5A34Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Western University, London, Canada N6A 3K7

Correspondence should be addressed to Xiaofei Tian; xtien@scut.edu.cn

Received 13 August 2018; Accepted 13 August 2018; Published 2 September 2018

Copyright © 2018 Xiaofei Tian et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Lignocelluloses consist of the biopolymers of cellulose,hemicellulose, and lignin that form a natural structuralmatrix. Representing one of the most abundant renewablenatural resources, the utilization of lignocelluloses does notnecessarily impact the environment and land use. The substi-tution of traditional fossil resources by the three majorbiopolymers as sustainable feedstock has been extensivelyinvestigated for the manufacture of high value-added prod-ucts including biofuels, commodity chemicals, biobasedfunctional materials, and heterogeneous catalysts thatcould be directly applied for promoting the manufacturingprocesses. Effective separation and conversion techniqueswould play a significant role in economic viability ofmanufacturing these products from the lignocellulosicfeedstock. Aiming at improving the conversion effective-ness or developing innovative techniques for new value-added products, this special issue was conceived for thecollection of studies on state-of-art techniques developedspecifically for producing chemicals, materials, and catalystsfrom the lignocellulosic feedstock.

In the natural source of cell walls, hemicellulose andlignin can be closely linked together in a homogeneousstate to form the lignin-carbohydrate complexes (LCC).Recently, the great strength and good biocompatibility ofthe lignin composition, as well as the stimulation of theanimal cell adsorption and growth by the containinggalactose composition, were reported. In the study entitled“Lignin-Carbohydrate Complexes Based Spherical Biocar-riers: Preparation, Characterization, and Biocompatibility,”

H. Zhao et al. prepared porous spherical carriers from thenatural LCC isolated from the xylem of Ginkgo biloba L. witha high physical strength. Because it contains the galactoseunit, the carriers are very biocompatible to human hepato-cytes. It shows a good promise of the LCC to be introducedas a biomedical supporter in the tissue engineering.

Nanofibrillated celluloses (NFCs) are high value-addedcellulosic materials for their high strength, high Young’smodulus but low coefficient of thermal expansion andtransparency. The NFCs were mechanically prepared fromlignocellulosic biomass in the industry. However, the naturalcellulose showed a strong resistance against the mechanicalfibrillation. The low yield, high degradation, and low energyefficiency always challenge the current mechanical prepara-tion of NFCs. In the study entitled “Ozone Oxidation of KraftBamboo Pulp for Preparation of Nanofibrillated Cellulose,”M. Liu et al. developed a novel green approach for NFC pro-duction from the low-cost Kraft bamboo pulp. Resultsshowed that the NFC product could be efficiently producethrough the homogenization method combined with theadvanced oxidation technique using ozone. The preparedNFC had a high aspect ratio of length (≥250 nm) versuswidth (10–20nm). In the study entitled “Preparation andCharacterization of Nanofibrillated Cellulose from BambooFiber via Ultrasonication Assisted by Repulsive Effect,”Z. Hu et al. reported an alternative process to efficientlyisolate the NFCs from bamboo fiber using ultrasonichomogenization with the assistance of negatively chargedentities. As the presence of the carboxyl groups attributed

HindawiInternational Journal of Polymer ScienceVolume 2018, Article ID 8742094, 2 pageshttps://doi.org/10.1155/2018/8742094

to the ionic repulsion between the carboxylate groups of thecellulose chains, the number of carboxyl groups that hadled to the addition of negative charge played a critical rolein the dispersion of NFCs. Ultrasonic homogenization couldcontribute to a further augmentation of the surface charge bydestroying the crystal structure of the cellulose composition.

Carbonaceous adsorbents derived from lignocellulosicbiomass could be applied in removal of heavy metals fromaqueous environments. In the study entitled “Valorizing RiceStraw and Its Anaerobically Digested Residues for Biochar toRemove Pb(II) from Aqueous Solution,” both the rice strawand its anaerobically digested residues (ADR) were valorizedto biochar through the pyrolysis approach. Results showedthat the Pb(II) absorption capacities of biochar producedfrom the rice straw and its ADR at 500°C were 276.3 and90.5mg·g−1, respectively. Different adsorption mechanismsacted between the biochar produced from the two biomassresources. The biochar from the rice straw promised anefficient adsorbent for removal of the Pb(II) from aqueoussolutions, in which the existence of the carbonates and car-boxylates was considered to be responsible for the promotedadsorption efficiency.

Soybean straw is a renewable resource in agriculturalbyproducts. In the study entitled “Evaluation of Alkali-Pretreated Soybean Straw for Lignocellulosic BioethanolProduction,” S. Kim tested the potential of the soybean strawto be used as the raw material for lignocellulosic bioethanolproduction. The results showed that the alkali-pretreatmentwith sodium hydroxide could remove the lignin and hemicel-lulose from the soybean straw effectively. The enzyme digest-ibility of the raw material was promoted leading an over 90%of the cellulose composition converted to fermentable sugarscatalyzed by the commercial Cellic CTec2 enzyme cocktail.The ethanol yield was 0.305 g ethanol/g dry soybean strawthrough the simultaneous hydrolysis and fermentation pro-cess under the optimal condition. The ethanol productivityfrom soybean straw was greatly enhanced by the pretreat-ment using sodium hydroxide.

We hope all the work above in this special issue couldprovide useful information and shall technically contributeto further development of the biorefinery field.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The editors sincerely appreciate all the authors and refereesfor their kind support and valuable contributions to thisspecial issue.

Xiaofei TianXuebing Zhao

Zhibin HeShanghuan Feng

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