INVESTIGATION OF THE PYROLYSIS OF LIGNIN BY USING COLLISION-INDUCED DISSOCIATION CHARGE-REMOTE FRAGMENTATION MASS SPECTROMETRY

Mass spectrometry of negative ions is a convenient method for generating, isolating, and analyzing reactive intermediates that would otherwise be too short lived to detect. This ion approach is especially useful for studying the chemical properties of radicals. In this work, a negative charge-carrying group was attached to lignin model compounds and combined with collision-induced dissociation (CID) to generate and characterize radical species involved in the primary pyrolysis of lignin. The charge-tag served to increase the sensitivity of the model compounds using electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) and promoted charge-remote fragmentations (CRF) upon being collisionally activated. The resulting product ions were comparable to the primary pyrolysis products of lignin; thus, CID-CRF proved to be an effective way of identifying the mechanisms by which lignin decomposes in the gas phase.