Reaction characteristics of metal-salt coordinated deep eutectic solvents during lignocellulosic pretreatment

A binary deep eutectic solvent consisting of choline chloride and glycerol (ChCl/Gly) is proven to be ineffective in lignocellulosic pretreatment, and arbitrarily screening coordination agents makes it difficult to directionally construct a valid solvent. This study investigated the designable diversity of ternary ChCl/Gly coordinated with various metal-salts by elucidating solvent properties and reaction characteristics. Alkaline/acidic strengths and hydrogen-bonding forces were key factors for component fractionation. Pretreatment performance was typically poor for solvents with few acidic sites and active protons (i.e., ChCl/Gly-KCl and MgCl2), as well as those with close proximity of H-bond donor and acceptor abilities (ChCl/Gly-ZnCl2). By contrast, strong alkaline ChCl/Gly-K2CO3 could achieved 72 % of delignification with a remarkable holo-cellulose preservation (70.8–80.9 %). Delignification underwent an independent rate-control of solvent diffusion and surface reaction with an endothermic nature (17.1 kJ/mol of ΔH and 20.3 kJ/mol of apparent activation energy). High temperature was beneficial for mitigating diffusion constraint at the initial pretreatment stage, maximally increasing the reaction rate by 7.7-fold. Moreover, Lewis acidic ChCl/Gly-FeCl3 (or AlCl3) removed 76–84.4 % of hemicellulose and 47.6–61.9 % of lignin while significantly deconstructing the aryl-ether bonds and β-O-4 linkages. But for acidic ChCl/Gly solvents, biomass dissolution was inconformity with the independent diffusion/reaction-controlling process, owing to the excessive hemicellulose degradation and hydrolytic by-product formation (maximally 91 g/kg xylose and 4 g/kg furans). Based on the lignin structural characterization, the potential reaction mechanism related to solvent properties was proposed to develop efficient ternary coordinated deep eutectic solvents.