Pretreatment of Lignocellulosic Biomass Feedstocks for Biofuel Production

Abstract

The shifting of dependence from conventional fuels to renewable fuels and its increased production to combat the energy, environmental, and geopolitical crises is a global concern. One of the viable and promising alternatives is liquid biofuel production using lignocellulosic biomass. Lignocellulosic biomass being the most abundant encompass cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin.The intricate complex of hemicellulose and lignin around cellulose is the bottleneck in commercializing the biofuel process. To make the cellulose and hemicellulose more accessible for hydrolysis and valorise the underutilized lignin for platform chemical production, pretreatment becomes imperative. Various pretreatment methods such as physical, mechanical, chemical, biological, and enzymatic and their combinations are employed for the production of bioethanol. It should be stressed that each pretreatment is unique in its condition and in most cases are biomass specific. With the above view, this chapter aims at bringing out the understanding of lignocellulosic pretreatment with updated information in the field.