Synthesis and formulation of lignin derived compounds as treatment of plant diseases

A method for extracting bio-oils from vegetation containing high sugar and high lignin content comprising the following steps:

• a) treating a high sugar, high lignin vegetation with 70 kg NaOH per ton of the vegetation in a 1:12 solid:liquid ratio loading at 92° C. for 2 hours to produce a lignin residue;
• b) disk refining the lignin residue at 200 kwh/ODMT followed by enzymatic hydrolysis;
• c) soaking the lignin residue in a solution of 0.1M NaOH until reaching a pH of 12.5;
• d) centrifugation of the solution followed by filtration;
• e) precipitating the lignin in the filtrate by using 2 M H2SO4 to reach a pH of 3.0;
• f) filtering the precipitated lignin;
• g) freeze-drying the lignin;
• h) performing catalytic transfer hydrogenolysis in ethanol with a metal/C catalyst;
• i) separating the solute from the solution via centrifugation;
• j) collecting the solution and diluting in a water:ethanol solvent
• k) extracting the solution from step j) sequentially:
• first in hexanes, followed by petroleum ether, then chloroform, and finally ethyl acetate to produce 5 total fractions;
• and
• l) evaporating the fractions by vacuum evaporation until a solvent free bio-oil is produced.