Structural characterization of milled wood lignins from different eucalypt species

The chemical structure of milled-wood lignins from Eucalyptus globulus, E. nitens, E. maidenii, E. grandis, and E. dunnii was investigated. The lignins were characterized by analytical pyrolysis, thioacidolysis, and 2D-NMR that confirmed the predominance of syringyl over guaiacyl units and only showed traces of p-hydroxyphenyl units. E. globulus lignin had the highest syringyl content. The heteronuclear single quantum correlation (HSQC) NMR spectra yielded information about relative abundances of inter-unit linkages in the whole polymer. All the lignins showed a predominance of beta-O-4' ether linkages (66-72% of total side-chains), followed by beta-beta' resinol-type linkages (16-19%) and lower amounts of beta-5' phenylcoumarin-type (3-7%) and beta-1' spirodienone-type linkages (1-4%). The analysis of desulfurated thioacidolysis dimers provided additional information on the relative abundances of the various carbon-carbon and diaryl ether bonds, and the type of units ( syringyl or guaiacyl) involved in each of the above linkage types. Interestingly, 93-94% of the total beta-beta' dimers included two syringyl units indicating that most of the beta-beta' substructures identified in the HSQC spectra were of the syringaresinol type. Moreover, three isomers of a major trimeric compound were found which were tentatively identified as arising from a beta-beta' syringaresinol substructure attached to a guaiacyl unit through a 4-O-5' linkage.