ORIGINAL ARTICLE An integrated approach for extracting fuel, chemicals, and residual carbon using pine needles Vinod Kumar 1 & Manisha Nanda 2 & Monu Verma 1 & Ajay Singh 1 Received: 30 August 2017 /Revised: 6 February 2018 /Accepted: 12 February 2018 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract The present study describes an integrated method that can be used to sequentially extract five economically important fractions viz., essential oil, organic acids, resin, cellulose, and residual carbon from biomass of pine needles. It is a simple but very effective approach which can give consistent yields from the residual biomass with every successive extraction step. For example, aqueous extracts 0.2 ± 0.5 ml/g, essential oil 0.03 ± 0.1 ml/g, resin 64.125 ± 0.2 mg/g, and 302.20 ± 04 mg/g of sugar and 1 ± 0.3 g of residual carbon. Sugars were further fermented under optimized conditions for the production of ethanol (18.2 ± 0.4 g/l). These yields were compared to direct processing of the individual components. Residual carbon obtained after hydrolysis was used for the preparation of activated carbon. This combined ethanol production and chemical extraction approach may provide a com- pelling model for a biorefinery and increasing commercial viability. Keywords Pine needles . Essential oil . Organic acids . Resin . Residual carbon 1 Introduction Lignocellulosic materials such as agricultural and forest residues are available to a large extent in India. These materials have been considered non-food-based feed stocks for biofuels production [ 1– 3 ]. According to Uttarakhand Renewable Energy Development Agency (UREDA), over 4500 ha of forest was gutted due to wildfires. The major reasons for forest fires in Indian Himalayas region are the highly flammable material of dry pine needles. In Uttarakhand, dry pine needles act as fuel for fire hazard. Nearly 15.9 million tons of pine needles is produced by Indian Himalayas region (Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu and Kashmir) every year [4]. Himalayan subtropical pine (Pinus roxburghii) forests are found in India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Pakistan. In India, pine forests covers about 0.5 million km 2 area [ 5]. The pine needles are also very harmful to animals and can lead to abortion in cattle [6]. It is also lethal to certain mi- crobes which are beneficial for agriculture [7, 8]. Soluble pheno- lic compounds found in pine needles are responsible for its slow decay and decrease the soil fertility [9]. Pine needles also affect the groundwater table as it hinders water absorption by the soil [6]. In India, dry pine needles are also consumed by several cement companies as direct fuel. Various researchers have worked on the production of methane from pine needles [ 6, 10]. Pine needles have more than 68.5% hollocellulose, 4.56% extractives, and 31.0% lignin [11]. Cellulose content of pine needles (41%) is comparable to softwood (42%), and lignin con- tent (35.1%) is high as compared to both softwood (28%) and hardwood (20%) [12]. Essential oil of pine needle components include α-terpineol (30.2%), linalool (24.47%), limonene (17.01%), anethole (14.57%), caryophyllene (3.14%), and euge- nol (2.14%) [13]. Pine needle aqueous extract contain 76.92% organic acids in which 25.20% is acetic acid, 18.19% hexadecanoic acid, and 16.44% 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol [14]. Singh et al. [ 15] converted pine needles by enzymatic sacchari- fication into sugar for fermentation. Bisht et al. [ 5] converted pine needles into briquettes. Gosh and Gosh [8] used pine needles for the production of lactic acid by fermentation. There are many methods available for treating dye wastewater such as ozonation, membrane filtration, ion- exchange, etc. [16]. Among these methods, adsorption is Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-018-0304-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Vinod Kumar vinodkdhatwalia@gmail.com 1 Department of Chemistry, Uttaranchal University, Dehradun, India 2 Department of Biotechnology, Dolphin (PG) Institute of Biomedical and Natural Sciences, Dehradun, India Biomass Conversion and Biorefinery https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-018-0304-z