Hemicellulose degradation upon hydrothermal treatment of black liquor

Abstract

Black liquor from Kraft pulping is a very promising feedstock for isolation of bio-based platform chemicals. As a pre-treatment step before fractionation and isolation processes, hydrothermal treatment of black liquor can be beneficial to improve the processability of the liquor and fine-tune its composition. In the present study, we present the results of black liquor heat treatment experiments and show that the hemicelluloses can be completely degraded upon treatment at 220 °C for 2 h.