Behaviors of Pulp During Delignification in Solutions of Deep Eutectic Solvents: Degradation of Cellulose

In this short communication, the degradation of cellulose for delignified pulp by deep eutectic solvents was evaluated. The pulp was delignified using different DES systems based on choline chloride and lactic acid (1:9), oxalic acid dehydrate (1:1), malic acid (1:1), and system alanine : lactic acid (1:9). This paper shows that cellulose degradation can be characterized in terms of the percentage degree of polymerization loss of cellulose. Among the investigated DES (Choline chloride:oxalic acid; choline chloride:malic acid; alanine:lactic acid; choline chloride:lactic acid), the most suitable seemed to be a treatment using the alanine:lactic acid system that provided a relatively low degradation of cellulose and high delignification efficiency for the removed of lignin from pulp.