An Overview of Extrusion as a Pretreatment Method of Lignocellulosic Biomass

Lignocellulosic biomass is both low cost and abundant, unlike energy crops, can escape associated ethical dilemmas such as arable land use food security issues. However, their usage raw material in a biorefinery implies an inherent upstream pretreatment step to access compounds of interest derived from lignocellulosic biomass. Importantly, the efficiency this determinant for downstream processes, while many methods have been explored, extrusion very flexible promising technology. Extrusion well-known polymer pharmaceutical industries has used since 18th century. method biomass, relatively new. The first purpose dates back 1990s. enjoys high degree flexibility due available parameters, but understanding requires knowledge these parameters different relationships between them. In paper, we present concise overview by reviewing key extruder design components operating conditions.