Suitability of New Organic Salt+Natural Carboxylic Acid Deep Eutectic Solvents

for Cellulosic Biomass Processing

María Francisco 1,C,S, Adriaan Van Den Bruinhorst1, Cor J. Peters1,2 and Maaike C. Kroon1

1
Eindhoven University of Technology, Separation Technology Group, Department of Chemical Engineering and
Chemistry, Eindhoven, Netherlands
2
The Petroleum Institute, Chemical Engineering Department, P.O. Box 2533, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
M.Francisco-Casal@tue.nl

Production of energy from renewable sources and the exploitation of natural biopolymer resources became a
major driving force to develop new biomass processing technologies. Lignocellulosic biomass is considered as a
valuable source for chemicals and fuel production. However, one of the major limitations for biomass
transformation is the poor solubility of lignocellulosic materials in conventional solvents. Considering their
excellent properties as solvents, ionic liquids (ILs) were successfully applied in biomass pretreatment and cellulose
hydrolysis[1]. ILs however, have some limitations concerning cost, recyclability and biodegradability. Deep Eutectic
Solvents (DES) show promising characteristics as alternative solvents for biomass processing among other
applications [2]. In this work, a new family of DES based on natural carboxylic acids and choline chloride is studied
based on the expectation that DES built from anions with high basicity and cations with the least hydrogen bond
donors have the highest solvating power for cellulose.

[1] N. Sun, M. Rahman, Y. Qin, M. L. Maxim, H. Rodr´iguez, R. D. Rogers, Complete dissolution and partial
delignification of wood in the ionic liquid 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate, Green Chem. 2009, 11, 646–655.
[2] Abbott, A.; Boothby, D.; Capperand,G.; Davies,D.; Rasheed, R.; Deep eutectic solvents formed between choline
chloride and carboxylic acids: Versatile alternatives to ionic liquids, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2004, 127, 9142–9147.