Bioproducts people are fond of saying "you can make anything from lignin -- except money" .... so I liked your headline.
Nonetheless -- lignin (in its crude form -- black liquor) is important for providing energy for pulp mills. My understanding is that in modern operations, basically all of it gets burned, and this is an important part of the process economics in P&P (they don't need much "external energy"). So what happens to those operations when we start diverting lignin to other uses?
I think this goes back to a discussion on energy and the viability of the recovery boiler. Being able to burn lignin does produce energy and that process also allows them to recover their pulping chemicals and enables them to be cost efficient. This is an enormous advantage when energy prices are high (see Europe over the last year and how pulp plants have restricted sales of lignin, specifically Borregard). Lignosulfonate for example has been used as a water reducing agent in concrete admixture for decades, but it's been scarce according to my sources due to forest products companies restricting the sale of their lignin.
If/when energy prices are lower or start to fall then burning lignin is less viable. Even better is if there is more value captured based on new value chains created downstream. Will a pulp mill make more money selling lignin as a crude oil equivalent, or even better if they can vertically integrate can they capture higher value/margins using tools like I presented above?
Also, plenty of potential lignin sources might be coming online such as Origin Materials' coproduct from their chloromethyl furfural production.
I'd be interested to see if there are any advances in separating lignocellulose such as bagasse that isn't pulping too.
Bioproducts people are fond of saying "you can make anything from lignin -- except money" .... so I liked your headline.
Nonetheless -- lignin (in its crude form -- black liquor) is important for providing energy for pulp mills. My understanding is that in modern operations, basically all of it gets burned, and this is an important part of the process economics in P&P (they don't need much "external energy"). So what happens to those operations when we start diverting lignin to other uses?
I think this goes back to a discussion on energy and the viability of the recovery boiler. Being able to burn lignin does produce energy and that process also allows them to recover their pulping chemicals and enables them to be cost efficient. This is an enormous advantage when energy prices are high (see Europe over the last year and how pulp plants have restricted sales of lignin, specifically Borregard). Lignosulfonate for example has been used as a water reducing agent in concrete admixture for decades, but it's been scarce according to my sources due to forest products companies restricting the sale of their lignin.
If/when energy prices are lower or start to fall then burning lignin is less viable. Even better is if there is more value captured based on new value chains created downstream. Will a pulp mill make more money selling lignin as a crude oil equivalent, or even better if they can vertically integrate can they capture higher value/margins using tools like I presented above?
Also, plenty of potential lignin sources might be coming online such as Origin Materials' coproduct from their chloromethyl furfural production.
I'd be interested to see if there are any advances in separating lignocellulose such as bagasse that isn't pulping too.
The future needs different lignins from various fractionation methods of lignocellulosic biomass.
Perfect! This is the way.