Dark color of lignin puts brakes on its development as sunscreen ingredient. In order to address this issue, the color of lignin was whitened by facile and economical approach via solvent fractionation and follow-up acetylation. After the two-step treatment, the color of lignin was highly lightened by 313.5% owing to the separation of dark-colored condensed structures and the blocking of free hydroxyls. The UV absorbability of the light-colored lignin was investigated, which indicated that the UV absorbance of the light-colored lignin are not as strong as commercial sunscreen actives under certain wavelengths, however it presented broad-spectrum absorbability and obvious synergistic effects with the commercial sunscreen actives. Based on that, lignin-based sunscreen was prepared by blending light-colored lignin with an SPF15 lotion, and the SPF of the as-prepared lignin sunscreen was boosted from 15.3 to 75.2 under a lignin addition amount of 8%. The as-prepared lignin sunscreen is stable enough under UV irradiation and exhibits outstanding color performance, which make it possible to satisfy the daily requirement of consumers. Briefly, an effective approach was demonstrated in this work to prepare light-colored lignin, which makes lignin a green alternative to replace synthetic sunscreen actives and imparts lignin potentials in cosmetics applications.

深色木质素阻碍了其作为防晒成分的发展。为了解决该问题，通过溶剂分馏和后续的乙酰化，通过简便且经济的方法将木质素的颜色增白。经过两步处理后，由于深色缩合结构的分离和游离羟基的封端，木质素的颜色大大减轻了313.5％。对浅色木质素的紫外吸收能力进行了研究，表明在一定波长下浅色木质素的紫外吸收能力不如市售防晒霜活性剂强，但具有广谱吸收性，与市售的木质素具有明显的协同作用。防晒霜。在此基础上，通过将浅色木质素与SPF15乳液混合，制备了木质素基防晒霜，木质素添加量为8％时，木质素防晒霜的SPF从15.3提高到75.2。所制备的木质素防晒剂在紫外线照射下足够稳定，并表现出优异的颜色性能，这使得可以满足消费者的日常需求。简而言之，这项工作证明了一种制备浅色木质素的有效方法，该方法使木质素成为替代合成防晒活性物质的绿色替代品，并在化妆品应用中赋予木质素潜力。