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As we see it
Swelling and breaking up
A Christmas tree ball? A new planet? Both is wrong. The photograph taken by a light microscope shows beech wood that has been broken up by an ionic liquid. Such salts, which liquefy below 100 degrees Celsius, make wood swell and break it down gently. This makes it easier to extract valuable components such as cellulose and lignin from the wood. These could replace fossil raw materials as the starting material for various products. Researchers from Jülich and Aachen are helping to optimise processes involving such liquids so that these processes can be used in industry.
This video shows the effect of the liquid:
The time-lapse video shows how the ionic liquid EMIMAc breaks up a slice of beech wood. The whole process takes less than seven minutes. The shots were taken after 5 and 50 seconds, respectively. First, the ionic liquid penetrates the dry wood through pores and channels. The dark horizontal lines consist of cells growing perpendicular to the trunk’s predominant direction of growth and connecting the living tissue on the outside of the trunk with the conductive pathways on the inside. Over time, the molecular wickerwork of lignin and cellulose begins to swell, which can be seen in nanometre-sized holes in the material. Finally, it is literally burst open, allowing the liquid to penetrate further. Cellulose fibres, lignin molecules and hemicellulose are then accessible for further processing steps, for example by enzymes. PHOTO: Video-Screenshot/Viell, J., Szekely, N.K., Mangiapia, G. et al. In operando monitoring of wood transformation during pretreatment with ionic liquids. Supplemental Material. Cellulose 27, 4889–4907 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-020-03119-4 (CC-BY 4.0), VIDEO: FORSCHUNGSZENTRUM JÜLICH