Dataset Information

Probing Chemical Changes in Holocellulose and Lignin of Timbers in Ancient Buildings.

ABSTRACT: Wooden structures in China's ancient buildings hold highly historical and cultural values. There is an urgent need to repair and replace the damaged wooden structures after hundreds and thousands of years of exposure to weather. Unfortunately, to date there is still a lack of insightful understanding on how the chemical structure, composition, and micro-morphology evolve over the long-term natural aging before artificial ancient timbers can be developed. This work aims to systematically examine the outer surface, middle layer, and inner surface of the same piece of Chinese fir (Cunninghamia lanceolate) collected from an ancient Chinese building. Based on qualitative and quantitative analysis, both cellulose and hemicellulose in aged woods are found to experience significant degrees of degradation. The crystalline regions of cellulose are also determined to undergo moderate degradation as compared to the control fresh wood. In comparison, the lignin basically remains unchanged and its content in the inner layer slightly increases, as evidenced by more free phenol groups determined. Relative to the outer and inner layer, the middle layer of the ancient wood shows the lowest degree of degradation close to that of the fresh wood. This work offers guidelines for fabricating artificial ancient woods to repair the destroyed ones in China's ancient architectures.

SUBMITTER: Zhao C

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6572151 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Probing Chemical Changes in Holocellulose and Lignin of Timbers in Ancient Buildings.

Zhao Chencheng C Zhang Xiaochun X Liu Lina L Yu Youming Y Zheng Wei W Song Pingan P

Polymers 20190506 5

Wooden structures in China's ancient buildings hold highly historical and cultural values. There is an urgent need to repair and replace the damaged wooden structures after hundreds and thousands of years of exposure to weather. Unfortunately, to date there is still a lack of insightful understanding on how the chemical structure, composition, and micro-morphology evolve over the long-term natural aging before artificial ancient timbers can be developed. This work aims to systematically examine ...[more]

PMID: 31064079

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundThe emerging cellulosic bioethanol industry will generate huge amounts of lignin-rich residues that may be converted into biogas by anaerobic digestion (AD) to increase the output of energy carriers from the biorefinery plants. The carbohydrates fraction of lignocellulosic biomass is degradable, whereas the lignin fraction is generally considered difficult to degrade during AD. The objective of this study was to investigate the feasibility of biogas production by AD from hydrolysis lignin (HL), prepared by steam explosion (SE) and enzymatic saccharification of birch. A novel nylon bag technique together with two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS), and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy was used to identify recalcitrant and degradable structures in the lignin during AD.ResultsThe HL had a lignin content of 80% which included pseudo-lignin and condensed-lignin structures resulting from the SE pretreatment. The obtained methane yield from HL was almost twofold higher than the theoretical methane from the carbohydrate fraction alone, indicating that part of the lignin was converted to methane. Characterization of the undegradable material after AD revealed a substantial loss of signals characteristic for carbohydrates and lignin-carbohydrate complexes (LCC), indicating conversion of these chemical components to methane during AD. The β-O-4' linkage and resinol were not modified as such in AD, but major change was seen for the S/G ratio from 5.8 to 2.6, phenylcoumaran from 4.9 to 1.0%, and pseudo-lignin and condensed-lignin were clearly degraded. Scanning electron microscopy and simultaneous thermal analysis measurements demonstrated changes in morphology and thermal properties following SE pretreatment and AD. Our results showed that carbohydrate, LCC, pseudo-lignin, and condensed-lignin degradation had contributed to methane production. The energy yield for the combined ethanol production and biogas production was 8.1 MJ fuel per kg DM of substrate (4.9 MJ/kg from ethanol and 3.2 MJ/kg from methane).ConclusionThis study shows the benefit of using a novel bag technique together with advanced analytical techniques to investigate the degradation mechanisms of lignin during AD, and also points to a possible application of HL produced in cellulosic bioethanol plants.

Dataset Information

Probing Chemical Changes in Holocellulose and Lignin of Timbers in Ancient Buildings.

Publications

Probing Chemical Changes in Holocellulose and Lignin of Timbers in Ancient Buildings.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets