Uncovering the synergistic effects between cellulose and lignin for advanced forest-based carbon fibers

Research Project, 2022 – 2024

Forest-based carbon fibers (CFs) have great potential to stimulate new value chains in light-weight composites. Commercial CFs are currently fossil-based with both a high carbon footprint and a high price.

CFs made completely from biobased material with a low climate impact is an area of research that have seen significant breakthroughs during the last years.Substantial progress has been reached in Sweden and Finland independently on fiber spinning and thermal conversion processes for making CFs from lignin and cellulose. This project digs into fundamental research questions to deepen the understanding on how variations of the raw materials affect the fibers and the conversion, and how the process and the CFs, can be further optimized. A special focus will be on unravelling interesting synergetic effects on combining cellulose and lignin. By combining competences and equipment in both countries, new knowledge, and further improvement of biobased CFs is expected to be achieved.