Engineering Commons^™

Improving Lignin Recovery From Paper Mill And Biorefinery Waste Streams Via Liquid-Phase Splitting, Carter Fitzgerald

All Dissertations

Lignin is an abundant biopolymer with significant promise due to its aromaticity. It has been targeted as a replacement for a number of petroleum-based products including adhesives, coatings, polyurethane foams, activated carbon, and carbon fibers. However, commercially available bulk lignins are too polydisperse, and contain too many residual metals from the pulping process that are detrimental to the properties of the final product.

The Sequential Liquid-lignin Recovery and Purification (SLRP) process was developed by Michael Lake and John Blackburn, in collaboration with Clemson, with the intention of creating a continuous method for recovering lignin from paper-mill black liquors. Thies and …

Rheological, Thermal And Processing Studies Of Perfluorocyclobutyl (Pfcb) Polymers, Erick Vasquez

All Theses

Polymeric materials are of interest to the fiber optics industry as glass–silica fibers are prone to fracture. However, the thermal resistance properties of current polymeric materials have limited their use in some optical applications including high performance lasers and high speed telecommunication systems. Therefore, it is of interest to develop new polymer materials and systems with enhanced thermal properties and processability for application in optics. This work focuses on the novel Perfluorocyclobutyl (PFCB) polymer systems. PFCB polymers possess characteristics that make them suitable for optics applications including: a low refractive index, high thermal stability and high chemical resistance. However, little …