Guest seminar: Quantitative mapping of lignin

Speaker: Gijs van Erven, Wageningen Food and Biobased Research

Abstract: Lignocellulosic resources hold huge potential to contribute to the transition of our current fossil-based linear economy into a circular bio-based economy, provided that all constituents are valorized. The improvement of lignin valorization incentives is key and requires accurate analysis of the molecules involved, both content-wise and structure-wise. This lecture deals with an extensive suite of advanced lignin analytics, highlighting the development of a quantitative pyrolysis-GC-MS platform employing 13 C labelled lignin internal standards and the use of detailed multidimensional NMR analysis. Several showcases ranging from fungal lignin conversion, the extraction of lignin using deep eutectic solvents to the use of lignin as multifunctional tracer in animal feed digestion studies will be presented.