Kraft lignin is an aromatic polymer found in black liquor, a side stream of the kraft pulping industry.Usually, lignin is burned in the recovery boiler of the pulp mill as a fuel for energy generation. However,lignin has great potential as a raw material for the production of fossil-free fuels, chemicals, andmaterials. Membrane filtration has been studied in the last decades as a key separation method torecover lignin from black liquor. Further studies to concentrate lignin using membrane filtration arerequired, as well as characterization of the resulting lignin fractions for the development of moleculartailored lignin-based applications.

In the present work, nanofiltration (NF) was used to concentrate and recover the low-molecularweightlignin obtained from the permeate of ultrafiltration of kraft black liquor. The concentration wasperformed using a NF090801 polymeric NF membrane (SolSep) with a molecular weight cut-off of 350Da. A transmembrane pressure of 25 bar and 50 °C during the filtration increased the lignin contentfrom 27 to 52 g/l, whereas a transmembrane pressure of 15 bar and 70 °C gave an increase from 18 to45 g/l in lignin content. The lignin fraction recovered in the retentate of the NF step was analyzed bysize-exclusion chromatography to ascertain the molecular weight of the lignin. Moreover, Fouriertransform infrared spectroscopy and thermogravimetric analysis were carried out to evaluate thethermal properties and functionalities of the obtained fractions.