Selective removal of phenolic lignin derivatives enables sugars recovery from wood prehydrolysis liquor with remarkable yield

•Binding of calcium ions to phenolic lignin leads to lignin precipitation.•Lignin removal occurs at pH higher enough for lignin ionization but not sugar.•Lime treatment facilitates enhanced uptake of lignin by anion exchange resin.•Lime-resin treatment results in 95% lignin removal and 78.8% sugar recovery. The specific elimination of lignin derivatives from wood hydrolysate without sugar loss has great practical significance to biorefinery and bioenergy. In the present study, a process consisting of calcium hydroxide and anion exchange resin treatments was developed for the purpose of selective removal of lignin from wood prehydrolysis liquor (PHL). Particular emphasis was made on the ionization of phenolic lignin, and the subsequent binding to metallic salts. It was observed that phenolic hydroxyl groups (PhOH) in lignin played an important role in lignin removal. The results showed that up to 95.2% lignin was removed from PHL with 78.8% sugar recovery. This suggested that the proposed process is highly specific to lignin, and therefore can be envisaged as a great contribution to wood-sugar production or bioenergy conversion.