“…It is also a waste product of paper and pulp industries wherein approximately 50 million tons of lignin are generated annually (Sivasankarapillai and McDonald 2011;Zeng et al 2014;Saini et al 2015). The complex polyphenolic structure and numerous functional groups of lignin are useful in their effective utilization for the development of polymers, adhesives, coating, additives, carbon fibers, activated carbon, foams and metal nanoparticles (Park et al 2008;Wang et al 2009;Aadil et al 2016). The effective use of lignin in blends with different biopolymers, such as starch (Bhat et al 2013), gelatin (Nunez-Flores et al 2013) and synthetic polymers like poly(vinyl alcohol), poly(ethylene), poly(lactic acid), poly(vinyl chloride) have also been reported in the literature (Gordobil et al 2014;Sahoo, et al 2011).…”