Tool for ILI’s lignin promotion
It is important to have an organisation that chaperones all efforts for lignin promotion in a single place that is accessible to all stakeholders of the field and also reaches out to neighbouring research fields, but also to vulgarisation and other promotion addressed to the non-scientific public.
The main tool for ILI’s lignin promotion is the ILI internet site in its entirety. This is accompanied by specific promotion actions. In the past that was done through the umbrella programme (see the description further down on this page). Although not formally closed, the umbrella programme is on its way of complete achievement. The scientific aspects are now slowly shifting to the Pilot Programme.
The general promotional actions are bundled in new upcoming specific activities, like a new general communication programme, financed by sponsors and preparing lignin information in a easy accessible form. One point is for example the preparation of adapted photographic material. At short notice the main accent will be on the writing of a whole bunch of promotion papers that will be the base for a general promotion action involving press releases to written press, to social media and to TV. One important point could be to raise awareness about the colour of lignin and to increase its acceptance. Also the ILI net site will play a major role, namely by making available information about successful lignin applications by developing the middle slider in the headings of this site. This activity will be financed by specific sponsorships. To participate, take contact with the .
Below the ILI umbrella programme is further presented as an example of an major achievement in the last 20 years. The lignin promotion activity continues the points concerning the topics mentioned in the second part of the description.
ILI umbrella programme
Since 2002, the thematic network EUROLIGNIN financed by the European Union, has been analysing existing and new research approaches in the lignin field. This network has brought about the creation of the umbrella programme within ILI, which includes analytical work, application research and further synergistic activities with other projects, for example in the field of biorefineries. More recent results of the research carried out in some of the projects being part of the ILI umbrella programme are available under PROGRESS.
The bellow picture shows the progress achieved since 2002 until 2015. In the beginning all items were pink. What now rests to achieve is mainly networked application oriented research.

The mission of this umbrella programme is:
- to promote exchanges between virtually all existing lignin projects. This goal is realized through official information exchange channels like newsletters, press releases, and publications, as well as through work on common themes such as analytical methods, solubility, toxicity, life cycle studies etc.
- to improve the quality of new research proposals by encouraging exchanges between potential partners, collecting information to identify the most promising new research approaches and, last but not least, facilitating the emergence of new stakeholders in the lignin field.
Lignin research will face a major challenge in the next 5 to 10 years, which is to develop its budgets to a degree that corresponds, at least partially, to its importance in nature and to the importance of its technological potential.
To reach this target, the lignin field will have to move from traditional and ad hoc research, based on a few teams, mostly with wood and paper background, to a more modern highly interactional network, involving many interdisciplinary research teams based on material sciences and life sciences.
A continuation of the successful implementation of such scenario will request:
- even more involvement in high added value topics, like nanosciences, smart polymers and topic related to life sciences;
- further skillful integration of lignin research into biorefinery and bioenergy concepts;
- identification of new stakeholders on the side of lignin applications. In the present situation there are multiple potential lignin sources and lignin production processes, among which 3 new big scale production projects, but not enough companies doing testing of these lignins are involved;
- a dramatic reduction of the average time of penetration for new research results into the scientific network.