Simultaneous isolation of cellulose and lignin from wheat straw and catalytic conversion to valuable chemical products

Abstract Convertible cellulose and lignin were simultaneously isolated from wheat straw using a two-stage process via simply varying temperature and H2SO4 concentration. At the first-stage, cellulose was obtained by pretreating wheat straw at lower temperature and acid concentration using an organosolv process. The purity, yield and recovery rate of cellulose reached 86.8 wt%, 55.2 and 92.8% at 150 °C with 1 wt% H2SO4. At the second stage, the residual liquid was further treated at higher temperature and acid concentration, giving 17.4% lignin yield with 86.6% recovery rate and 93.2 wt% purity at 180 °C with 1.5 wt% H2SO4. The conversion of the as-isolated cellulose and lignin into chemicals was further investigated. The total yield of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural and glucose derived from wheat straw cellulose reached 82.5%, and 18.3% yield of monophenolic compounds from lignin were obtained, respectively. These results indicated that the two-stage process was effective for obtaining high-quality cellulose and lignin from wheat straw. Both of them displayed excellent convertible property.