A sustainable biorefinery strategy: Conversion and fractionation in a facile biphasic system towards integrated lignocellulose valorizations

A sustainable and integrated biorefinery strategy was achieved by a facile biphasic system, ferric trichloride (FeCl 3 ) solution assisted by methyl isobutyl ketone (MIBK), yielding multiple products: furfural, sugars, and lignin nano-particles simultaneously. For the highest yield of furfural, the conditions were optimized resulting in 75.55% and over 69.38% of the yields from xylose and some typical biomasses respectively. Both the catalyst and MIBK can be recycled. Eucalyptus was lucubrated on the valorizations of three major-components with 75.18% of furfural yield, 97.54% of cellulase digestibility from the residue and lignin nano-particles. Meanwhile, the regularities of biomass degradation under this biphasic system were summarized as well as high digestibility which was resulted by hemicellulose and lignin removal in cooperation with the amount of the cellulase binding sites. Based on the proposed biorefinery strategy, 65.82% of the initial mass can be valorized into high-value end-products.