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Population growth coupled with significant pressure for clean agricultural practices puts a heavy burden on conventional crop treatments that target high yields with minimal cropland expansion. Optimization of fertilization systems is required as part of the solutions to current megatrends. Herein, we present a sustainable strategy to achieve controlled release formulations for nitrogen fertilization. Specifically, we used interfacial engineering to design alginate-based matrices that incorporated biogenic silica particles to achieve increased interfacial area for dynamic entrapment and release of ammonium nitrate. The incorporation of biogenic silica in the alginate matrix provided a porous architecture spanning length scales from the micro- (within particles) to the macrosize (within the polymeric matrix) levels, leading to tunable patterns of nitrogen release. Alginate–biogenic silica granules approached the European requirements of “slow-release” compositions. At optimized silica content, 15% of the nitrogen was released within 24 h and 56% over 28 days. The complete nitrogen dissolution was achieved after 60 days. The experimental results and kinetic models provided insights on the mechanisms driving the nitrogen release from the alginate–silica matrix as a function of the pore–polymer hybrid architectures.

Lignin is one of the most important and widespread carbon sources on Earth. Significant amounts of lignin are delivered to the market by pulp mills and biorefineries, and there have been many efforts to develop routes for its valorization. Over the years, lignin has been used to produce biobased chemicals, materials, and advanced biofuels on the basis of its variable functionalities and physicochemical properties. Today, lignin’s applications are still limited by its heterogeneity, variability, and low reactivity. Thus, modification technologies have been developed to allow lignin to be suitable for a wider range of attractive industrial applications. The most common modifications used for this purpose include amination, methylation, demethylation, phenolation, sulfomethylation, oxyalkylation, acylation or esterification, epoxidation, phosphorylation, nitration, and sulfonation. This article reviews the chemistry involved in these lignin modification technologies, discussing their effect on the finished product while presenting some market perspectives and future outlook to utilize lignin in sustainable biorefineries.

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Araucaria angustifolia seeds are culturally important from South America; however, the seed coat is generally discarded and have yet to find a beneficial commercial impact. We propose a new formulation...