Effects of Thermal Stabilization and Electron Beam Irradiation on the Characteristics of Lignin Extracted from Black Liquor

In the present work, lignin extracted from black liquor, which is industrial waste of pulp manufacturing. The extracted lignin was irradiated at various electron beam intensities from 100 to 1000 kGy. Also, the extracted lignin was thermally stabilized by heat treatment process. The characteristics of the stabilized and irradiated lignin materials were examined by means of TGA, ATR-FTIR, EA, and SEM. The ATR-FTIR result shows that both stabilized and irradiated lignin samples exhibit the decrease of characteristic absorption peaks, indicating the presence of guaiacyl and syringyl groups in the lignin structure. It reveals that the irradiation done to the ‘as-extracted’ lignin with appropriate electron beam intensity provides an efficiency as thermal stabilization of the lignin, suggesting that electron beam irradiation may apply directly to the extracted lignin, prior to carbonization the lignin without thermal stabilization process.