(253a) Investigating and Leveraging Natural Variation of Lignin in Biomass

Over the past decade, the biorefining of biomass has evolved from solely focusing on renewable fuel generation to the complete utilization of biomass for fuels, chemicals, and materials. As such, the development of lignin first pretreatments has been pursued to yield a clean stream of lignin and a reactive, low-recalcitrance cellulose-rich stream. The former stream provides a bioresource for new materials and fuel opportunities, whereas the latter provides enhanced conversion to cellulosic ethanol. The continued interest in renewable fuels from biomass has placed a particular interest in biomass fractionation into streams enriched in cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. In this presentation, the natural variation of cell wall polymers is explored in Populus and switchgrass, and we examine how advanced lignin first pretreatments can be tailored to enhance fractionation and conversion by utilizing recent advances in spectroscopic analysis and computational modeling.This presentation will examine the unique chemistry interactions between pretreatment solvents and cell wall components and their contribution to reducing biomass recalcitrance and efficient conversion.