There is a saying; “You can make almost anything with lignin except money”.  So, if you can’t make money out of it why waste any time on it?  The reality is that whether we like it or not, petrochemical business is no longer petrochemical business as usual.  For too long have we used oil as the base for all our chemical and energy needs.  I don’t think it will change soon.  However, as populations grow and scarce resources such as drinking water, aribale land clean air, in-tact ecosystems (the little we have left) are becoming more and more important, oil and bio-derived raw materials will have to find a way to live together.  Alternatively, if this cannot be accomplished, let’s hope Elon Musk has successfully colonized Mars.  Indeed, this author can attest to the fact that lignin can be used to successfully make nearly everything including resols and polyols for polyurethanes and surfactants and demulsifiers.  Novolacs, not so much.  It is more difficulty to incorporate an already three-dimensional structure into a linear convoluted phenol formaldehyde structure but yes, it is possible with a little bit of innovation dust.  By now you’re probably wondering so what about the business case?  All good and well to know what you can do with lignin but what are the drivers that really make it worth investing in?  Those drivers are the following:

• Phenol and formaldehyde price. Yes, phenol rides on the back of the oil price and formaldehyde follows phenol. Currently phenol is in free-fall so anyone using phenol only as a reason to invest in lignin-based replacement of phenol and the related products will certainly not be excited.
• However, there is more. The limits for phenol and formaldehyde are becoming more and more stringent in many areas of the world where phenolic resins are used.  There are of course more expensive ways to reduce formaldehyde but this author has realized a 25% reduction in formaldehyde use when using a chemically modified lignin replacement of phenol.
• Adding lignin as a means of replacing phenol and deriving polyols for rigid polyurethane foams and polyisocyanurate foams equalizes out the variation in cost experienced for phenol on the one hand and polyols on the other hand. One could therefore say it stabilizes to some extent the currency and product cost fluctuations.

So, these are some compelling reasons to stick to the use of lignin to make bio-derived products.  Another reason is that lignin shows some odd behavior when it comes to certain other bio-derived raw materials such as polysaccharides and so on.  I won’t go into too much detail here on what is possible but this author has experienced that lignin is indeed a wonderful companion for many other bio-derived materials for example starch.  This allows one to extend the application of lignin in many applications even further and allows the chemical modification of lignin to be extended.  It enables one to modify the functionality and molecular weight of lignin and lignin composites.  In this case the composite extends to other bio-derived materials but of course lignin can interact with existing petrochemical polymers to reduce cost of the final application.  However, to derive the full value of this one must understand the chemistry of lignin to derive the full benefit.  An example of this the fact that lignin will most probably interact strongly with polymers having polar groups in their structure or nitrogen.  At this point of distraction let’s head back to the business case for lignin.  Certainly, being able to make bio-composites with certain well-known polymers (plastics) is a fourth reason why one should stick to the business of lignin.