Purpose of Review

As a major component of wood, lignin is regarded as a promising, bio-based compound which could strongly influence the forest-based circular bioeconomy. Much research has been conducted on the material use of lignin, but the lignin commercialization process is still under development; few commercial production facilities and larger-scale applications are available. Therefore, we present a review of recent research papers on the economic perspectives on lignin.

Recent Findings

Research has been conducted on lignin application areas such as lignin-derived polymeric materials, polymer and composite systems, applications for microsized and nanosized lignin, energy storage, and renewable chemicals. On the whole, the life cycle assessment results indicate that lignin-based innovations can be environmentally beneficial. Techno-economic studies identified the lignin feedstock cost and the achievable product price as the most sensitive factors. Recently, researchers pointed out information asymmetries between different stakeholder groups concerning lignin-containing products.

Summary

Although most of the relevant papers presented a technical perspective of lignin, a smaller set of general economic statements about lignin appear in these papers. These statements refer to lignin underutilization, limited markets, resource abundancy, and barriers to utilization. The literature on technical lignin with an economic perspective can be divided into two different streams: several techno-economic papers and fewer socio-economic papers. The former placed a primary focus on production processes from a profit maximization perspective, but attempts were also made in the latter to explain the socio-technical innovation system. To date, lignin researchers have focused mainly on internal (direct) factors but have not yet sufficiently considered external (indirect) factors.

中文翻译：

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为什么我们可以从木质素中赚钱以外的任何东西？在木质素研究中寻求更广阔的经济前景

审查目的

木质素作为木材的主要成分，被认为是一种有前途的生物基化合物，可以强烈影响以森林为基础的循环生物经济。关于木质素的材料用途已经进行了很多研究，但是木质素的商业化过程仍在开发中。几乎没有商业生产设施和大规模应用。因此，我们提出了关于木质素的经济学观点的最新研究论文的综述。

最近的发现

已经对木质素应用领域进行了研究，例如木质素衍生的聚合物材料，聚合物和复合系统，微尺寸和纳米尺寸的木质素的应用，能量存储和可再生化学品。总体而言，生命周期评估结果表明，基于木质素的创新对环境有利。技术经济研究确定木质素原料成本和可达到的产品价格是最敏感的因素。最近，研究人员指出了不同利益相关者群体之间关于含木质素产品的信息不对称。

概要

尽管大多数相关论文都介绍了木质素的技术观点，但这些论文中出现了较少的有关木质素的一般经济声明。这些陈述涉及木质素利用不足，市场有限，资源丰富和利用障碍。从经济学角度出发，有关技术木质素的文献可分为两个不同的类别：几篇技术经济论文和较少的社会经济论文。前者主要从利润最大化的角度着眼于生产过程，但后者也试图解释社会技术创新体系。迄今为止，木质素研究人员主要关注内部（直接）因素，但尚未充分考虑外部（间接）因素。