We are researching biomass. Biomass is a resource derived from plants and animals. One type of biomass, wood, contains cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. It would be easier to utilize the constituents if the wood could be totally dissolved, but it is difficult to totally dissolve the wood in water or common organic solvents, and only a few solvents are known. We have found that certain carboxylic acids can dissolve ball-milled wood. We are now conducting research to utilize this technology to make effective use of wood constituents.

Yuri Nishiwaki-Akine and Takashi Watanabe, Green Chem., 16, pp. 3569-3579, May 2014

We dried a solution of wood to obtain a brownish transparent woody film. In a sense, it is "transparent wood" because its composition is almost identical to wood. It can be bent and folded like origami. It is an environmentally friendly material that can be easily biodegraded in soil or river water. We are currently studying the use of this material as a substitute for plastics.

Yuri Nishiwaki-Akine et al. ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng., 2017, 5 (12), pp 11536–11542, November 2017