Isolation and Physicochemical Characterization of Lignin from Chromolaena Odorata and Tithonia Diversifolia

This study dealt with isolation of lignin from soft woods namely; chromolaena odorata (siam weed) and tithonia diversifolia (mexican sunflower) using alkali pretreatment method. the raw samples were characterized by some physico-chemical parameters before extraction. chromolaena odorata gave higher lignin yield and lesser ash content of 15.12 % and 4.22 % respectively compared to tithonia diversifolia with 7.40 % and 9.56 % respectively. the isolated lignins were characterized by some physico-chemical parameters and spectroscopy methods like futran transform infrared spectroscopy (ft-ir) and scanning electron microscopy (sem). lignin from chromolaena odorata was found to be more pure than the one from tithonia diversifolia as evident from the values of ash content (4.22%) and klason lignin (33.65 %) for chromolaena odorata while ash content (9.56 %) and klason lignin (21.96 %) were obtained from tithonia diversifolia. the ft-ir spectra of both lignins revealed the presence of syringyl and guaiacyl units