A novel solvothermal biorefinery for production of lignocellulosic xylooligosaccharides, fermentable sugars and lignin nano-particles in biphasic system

Biorefinery plays a pivotal role in biomass economy with environmentally benign process. Herein, we report a coupling dihydrolevoglucosenone and aqueous p-toluenesulfonic acid (Cyrene/TsOH aq.) system for efficient saccharification of moso bamboo. More than 87.3 % of cellulose recovery could be observed under mild condition of 120 °C for 60 min, accompanied by 85.5 % hemicellulose removal and 79.4 % lignin extraction, respectively. Notably, 90.6 % of saccharified yield could be obtained including 67.7 % of oligosaccharide and 22.9 % of monosaccharide. Besides, the yielded lignin exhibited high purity of 99.1 % and outstanding uniform polydispersity index of 1.49 with nanoscale particle size around 347 nm, which is of great significance for further application. Furthermore, the synergistic effect between Cyrene and TsOH on efficiency and specificity of biorefinery was proposed by control experiments and verified by molecular dynamics simulation and quantum chemical calculation, which provided a new insight for full components biorefinery of lignocellulosic biomass.