A study on extraction of 15 kinds of possible lignin degradation products from aqueous solutions was performed by evaluating the distribution coefficients of five different organic-H2O systems under different conditions. The experimental results show that the extraction of lignin degradation products from aqueous solutions achieved equilibrium within 30 min; the concentration of the extracted materials and the amount of extractant had a negligible effect on the distribution coefficients. Among the five kinds of extractants investigated in this work, n-butanol was the best solvent for extracting the lignin degradation products, and chloroform had a good selectivity for the extraction of aldehyde. The temperature greatly influenced the distribution coefficients because the distribution coefficients decreased considerably with the extraction temperature. These results provide insights for the degradation of the lignin in a two-phase system. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.