(Blacksburg, Va., April 11, 2002) -- At professional meetings worldwide, polymer chemists are organizing sessions to look at such renewable resources as starch; wood-derived cellulose, xylan, and lignin; chitin; and other carbohydrates. Increased use of lignin is one strategy being discussed at the 223rd national meeting of the American Chemical Society, April 7-11 in Orlando.

"We envision an industrial technology that is sustainable that makes use of renewable resources to run industrial processes, instead of pumping oil out of Alaska. This is what people all over the world want, what the Kyoto Accords are all about," says Wolfgang Glasser, professor of wood science and forest products at Virginia Tech.

Lignin, a natural polymer isolated from wood during papermaking and biomass fractionation, can be added to a host of materials to replace oil-derived resources, and to make those materials biodegradable and environmentally-friendly.

"Plants fix carbon dioxide out of our atmosphere using solar energy, and this generates between one and 10 gigatons of biomass a year. It's fantastic. Solar energy used by plants to cycle carbon into biomass energizes all forms of life at perpetuity. The amounts of materials we could harvest and transform into everyday products on a sustainable basis are gigantic," says Glasser.

Industry wishes to adopt natures ways of sustainability. "So we are looking at the current state of art in making use of these biomass resources for industrial materials."

Glasser has worked with lignin for a long time, extracting it from wood and agricultural harvesting residues and from paper-making waste. He has engineered materials from it, working on the molecular level, and has patents for applications ranging from biomedical materials to household items. Now he has teamed up with Jairo H. Lora of Media, Pa., who markets lignin as a powder for the Swiss company, Granit S.A.

Lora and Glasser's paper will
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Contact: Wolfgang Glasser
wglasser@vt.edu
540-231-4403
Virginia Tech
11-Apr-2002