Lignin is a natural biopolymer that is the third most abundant in nature after cellulose and chitin. Despite its widespread occurrence, it has been little used industrially to date, as it is usually regarded as a by-product of the paper industry and is generally only exploited thermally. However, there have recently been many efforts to make further technical use of this biopolymer. Besides applications in the food industry (reduction to vanillin as a flavoring agent), as a binder in asphalt or as a filler in elastomers, research into lignin as a precursor material for carbon fibers has been carried out for many years. Due to the wide range of possible applications, new processes have been developed to extract the lignin specifically from the biomass. The properties of the lignin obtained in this way depend on the extraction process on the one hand and on the original source of the biomass on the other. This results in a broad spectrum of commercial lignin qualities with different properties.

For the use of lignin in textile applications, the solubility and fiber formation properties are of essential importance. Therefore, the solubility of several commercial lignins in different organic and inorganic solvents were investigated in order to further process them in a wet spinning process. The results show, that the origin and pulping method of the lignins have a huge impact on their suitability and consequently on the processing into spinning dope for the manufacturing of precursor fibers.