Today nearly all aromatic chemicals and building blocks originate from fossil sources, whereas lignin as a phenolic natural polymer could provide a valuable renewable aromatic resource for the chemical industry. the project aíms at adding value to the underexploited biomass side stream lignin, providing quality ensured homogeneous raw materials for manufactures and industrial end- users, lowering the need for oil based raw materials in the production of materials and chemicals and enhancing sustainable processing e.g. by reducing the GHG emissions. In SmartLi new technologies are developed for using technical lignins as raw materials for biomaterials and their industrial feasibility is demonstrated. The technical lignins included in the study are kraft lignins, lignosulphonates and bleaching effluents, representing all types of abundant lignin sources. The raw materials are obtained from industrial partners. The technical lignins are not directly applicable for the production of biomaterials with acceptable product specifications. Therefore, pretreatments has been developed to reduce their sulphur content and odour and provide constant quality. Thermal pretreatments are shown to to improve the material properties of lignin to be used as reinforcing filler in composites, while fractionating pretreatments provided streams to be used as plasticizers. The development of composite applications is led by an industrial partner. Base catalysed degradation was used as a means to yield reactive oligomeric lignin fractions for resin applications. The degradation was followed by downstream processing and further chemical modification for polyol replacement in PU resins. Also PF type resins for gluing and laminate impregnation, and epoxy resins were the target products. Full LCA, including a dynamic process, will support the study.
