Characterization of Lignocellulosic Materials

Book excerpt: Lignocellulosic materials are a natural, abundant and renewable resource essential to the functioning of industrial societies and critical to the development of a sustainable global economy. As wood and paper products, they have played an important role in the evolution of civilization. Improvement of the quality and manufacturing efficiency of such products has often been hampered by the lack of understanding of the complex structures and chemical compositions of the materials. Due to increasing economic and environmental issues concerning the use of petrochemicals, lignocellulosic materials will be relied upon as feedstock for the production of chemicals, fuels and biocompatible materials. Significant progress has been made to use lignocellulosic materials for the production of fuel ethanol and as a reinforcing component in polymer composites. Effective and economical methods for such uses, however, remain underdeveloped, partly due to the difficulties encountered in the characterization of the structures of native lignocelluloses and lignocelluloses-based materials. Improved methods for the characterization of lignocellulosic materials are needed. Characterization of Lignocellulosic Materials covers recent advances in the characterization of wood, pulp fibres and papers. It also describes the analyses of native and modified lignocellulosic fibres and materials using a range of advanced techniques such as time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry, 2D heteronuclear single quantum correlation NMR, and Raman microscopy. The book provides a survey of state-of-the-art characterization methods for lignocellulosic materials, for both academic and industrial researchers who work in the fields of wood and paper, lignocelluloses-based composites and polymer blends, and bio-based fuels and materials.