Ultrasonically assisted liquefaction of lignocellulosic materials.

In our research, we have utilized high energy ultrasound for the liquefaction of different lignocellulosic materials, wood wastes in particular. We developed a highly efficient way of transforming this biomass waste into valuable chemicals. It was found, that the reaction yield in all experiments was high and that the reaction times were shortened up to nine times when using the ultrasound process with smaller residual particles and with no influence on the hydroxyl number of the final products. The use of the ultrasound process inhibits the formation of the large molecular structures during the liquefaction from the degradation products, by keeping the reactive segments apart and due to such a short reaction time being used. The short reaction time and subsequent low energy consumption for the liquefaction reaction leads to the creation of the new method for the transformation of the wood waste materials into valuable chemicals.