A major challenge of the 21st century will be to generate transportation fuels using feedstocks such
as lignocellulosic waste materials as a substitute for existing fossil and nuclear fuels. The advantages
of lignocellulosics as a feedstock material are that they are abundant, sustainable and carbon-neutral.
To improve the economics of producing liquid transportation fuels from lignocellulosic biomass, the
development of value-added products from lignin, a major component of lignocellulosics, is necessary.
Lignins produced from black liquor through the fractionation of sugarcane bagasse with soda and organic
solvents have been characterised by physical, chemical and thermal means. The soda lignin fractions have
different physico-chemical and thermal properties from one another. Some of these properties have been
compared to bagasse lignin extracted with aqueous ethanol.