The use of biomass as fuels, feedstock and materials has gained recognition in recent years. Developing sustainable solvents for biomass processing and recovery remains a challenge of the chemical industry. Room temperature ionic liquids have been designed for application in biomass waste recovery. Their polarities have been determined and it was found that protic alkylammonium ionic liquids have high α and β values. A comparison of the Kamlet Taft properties with that of alkylimidazolium ionic liquids shows that polarities can be expanded by changing the functionalities on the anion and cation. The stabilities of ammonium ionic liquids as shown by thermogravimetric analysis are lower than their imidazolium counterparts. All ionic liquids have been found to heat up appreciably under microwave irradiation. Their effectiveness as solvents for carbohydrates and biomass has been examined. It was found that the solubility of carbohydrates by ionic liquids is dependent on the polarity of the ionic liquids and other factors such as temperature and the presence of water. High α HBD ability and high β HBA ability were found to promote solubility of glucose and sucrose in ionic liquids, while high β and low α were found to promote cellulose solubility. A novel extraction protocol for the delignification of lignocellulosic biomass wastes under microwave irradiation has been designed that can reduce the amount of waste effluents produced from the process.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:538246 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Iti, Ozunimi Lilian |
| Contributors | Welton, Tom ; Grimes, Susan |
| Publisher | Imperial College London |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/7075 |
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