Speaker
Jyri-Pekka Mikkola
Description
For centuries the Nordic countries have been relying on their natural resources, particularly forest, to make value-added products exported throughout the world and, at the same time, helping the societies to create wealth, job opportunities and social welfare. The global changes taking place today have gradually rendered these industries less competitive and profitable upon increasing competition from, particularly, Asia and South America when the consumption of such bulk products like paper and pulp have declined in the western word. The rise of the digital era, i.e. increasing use of electronic information and documentation, has meant that the volumes needed are in the decline in the developed world whereas the developing world still has room for growth in these products. Consequently, the industry has been forced to adapt and change, moving a lot of production capacity to there were the demand is. At the same time, increasing efforts are made to transform and trim the production in the original ‘homeland’ mills partly towards new, more innovative and more sophisticated products but also ‘back-to-basics’ i.e. packaging solutions based on cellulose. Moreover, importantly, there is a strong incentive and drive to move towards production of various value-added, modern biorefining solutions covering the areas of bio-based energy, transportation and chemical commodities.
To meet the future challenges we have been developing an entirely new concept for biorefining utilizing ‘switchable’ ionic liquids (SILs) to fractionate biomass to its constituents while still to a large extent retaining their native structure [1-11]. Further, the very same SIL technology can be used for CO2 or other acid gas capture and mitigation, productions of superior nanocellulose, as a medium of catalytic reactions including both bio- and supported heterogeneous catalysis as well as pre-processing/pretreatment and detoxification of biomass for e.g. fermentation processes.
References:
1. I.Anugwom, P.Virtanen, P.Mäki-Arvela, J-P Mikkola, Switchable Ionic Liquids (SILs) based on glycerol and acid gases, RSC Advances 2011, 1, 452-457, doi:10.1039/C1RA00154J
2. I. Anugwom, P.Mäki-Arvela, P. Virtanen, S.Willför, R.Sjöholm, J.-P. Mikkola, Selective Extraction of Hemicelluloses from Spruce using Switchable Ionic Liquids, Carb.Polym. 87, 3, 2012, 2005-2011; doi:10.1016/j.carbpol.2011.10.006
3. I.Anugwom, P.Mäki-Arvela, P.Virtanen, S.Willför, P.Damlin, M.Hedenström, J.-P. Mikkola, Treating birch wood with a switchable 1,8-diazabicyclo-[5.4.0]-undec-7-ene-glycerol carbonate ionic liquid, Holzforschung, 2012, 66,809-815, DOI: 10.1515/hf-2011-0226
4. Ikenna Anugwom, Eta, V., Virtanen, P., Mäki-Arvela, P., Hedenström, M., Hummel, M., Sixta, H., Mikkola, J.-P New Alkanol Amine - Organic Superbase derived Switchable Ionic Liquids (SILs) as a Delignification Solvent for Birch (B. Pendula), ChemSusChem, 2014, 7, 1170-1176, 10.1002/cssc.201300773
5. Anugwom, I, Eta, V., Mäki-Arvela P., Virtanen, P., Lahtinen, M., Mikkola J.-P., The effect of Switchable Ionic Liquid (SIL) treatment on the composition and crystallinity of Birch Chips (Betula Pendula) using a novel alkanol amine-organic superbase-derived SIL, Green Process and Synthesis 2014, 3,2, 147-154, eISSN: 2191-9550, DOI: 10.1515/gps-2013-0108
6. Anugwom, I, Eta, V.,Mäki-Arvela, P., Virtanen, P., Hedenström M., Ma, Y., Hummel, M., Sixta, H., Mikkola J.-P., Towards optimal selective fractionation for Nordic woody biomass using Novel Amine–Organic Superbase derived Switchable Ionic Liquids (SILs), Biomass & Bioenergy, 2014, 70, 373-381, DOI: 10.1016/j.biombioe.2014.08.005
6. Eta, V., Anugwom I., Virtanen P., Mäki-arvela P., Mikkola J-P, Enhanced mass transfer upon switchable ionic liquid mediated wood fractionation, Industrial Crops and Products 55 (2014) 109–115
7. E. Salminen, P. Mäki-Arvela, P. Virtanen, J. Wärnå, T. Salmi and J.-P. Mikkola, Kinetics upon isomerization of alpha and beta-pinene oxides over Supported Ionic Liquid Catalysts (SILCAs), Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, 2014, 53 (52), 20107–20115, DOI:10.1021/ie503999z
8. E. Salminen, L.Rujana, P. Mäki-Arvela, P. Virtanen, T. Salmi, J.-P. Mikkola, Biomass to value added chemicals: Isomerisation of β-pinene oxide over supported ionic liquid catalysts (SILCAs) containing Lewis acids, Cat. Tod. 2015, 257, 2, 318-321, DOI: 10.1016/j.cattod.2014.05.024
9. Venkata Prabhakar Soudham, Dilip Govind Raut, Ikenna Anugwom, Tomas Brandberg, Christer Larsson, Jyri-Pekka Mikkola, Coupled Enzymatic Hydrolysis and Ethanol Fermentation: Ionic Liquid Pretreatment for Enhanced Yields, Biotechnol Biofuels., 2015, 8:135, DOI 10.1186/s13068-015-0310-3
10. Valerie Eta & Jyri-Pekka Mikkola, Deconstruction of Nordic Hardwood in Switchable Ionic Liquids and Acylation of the Dissolved Cellulose, Carb. Polym. 2016, 136, 459-465, dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.carbpol.2015.09.058
11. Per Rogne, Tobias Sparrman, Ikenna Anugwom, Jyri-Pekka Mikkola, Magnus Wolf-Watz, Real-time 31P NMR shows that a hydrated switchable ionic liquid is compatible with enzymatic catalysis, ChemSusChem 2015, dx.doi.org/10.1002/cssc.201501104 (in press)
Primary author
Jyri-Pekka Mikkola
(University of Umeå)
