Lignin: make less, or make more of it, a Digest special report

Biomass Digest
June 17, 2010 Jim Lane

“Lignin is nature’s plastic and any organism that wants to get to the sugars in a plant has to be able to get past this protective barrier,” professor Ming Tien of Penn State.

There’s lignin, lignin everywhere. Next to cellulose, it is the second most abundant organic material on Earth, representing 24-35 percent of softwood weight and 17-25 percent of hardwoods. That’s around 135 billion tons of lignin

Generally, when we use lignin at all, we use it for burning., By and large, it has similar moisture and BTU values as coal (in the 11-12,000 Btu/lb range) with a low ash content. With Central Appalachian coal in the $65/ton range, it’s a low value product at around 3 cents per pound.

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