Extraction of phenolic compounds from crude pyrolysis oil

Due to serious environmental problem and strict regulations to control pollution, researchers across the globe are putting their effort to find clean, renewable, greener and cost effective method to produce biochemical from biomass. The aim of this article was to highlight the method to extract phenolic compounds from crude pyrolysis oil using switchable hydrophilicity solvents (SHS). The pyrolysis oil was produced from softwood Kraft lignin through novel microwave pyrolysis process. The extraction efficiency of the method discussed in this article was about 95%. However, it was applied to small batch of pyrolysis oil (10 g). The highlight also presents the advantage and disadvantage of phenolic compound extraction methods including the recent proposed by Fu et al., 2013.