Fundamentals of Biomass Pretreatment by Fractionation

With the rise in global energy demand and environmental concerns about the use of fossil fuels, the need for rapid development of alternative fuels from sustainable, non-food sources is now well acknowledged. The effective utilization of low-cost high-volume agricultural and forest biomass for the production of transportation fuels and bio-based materials will play a vital role in addressing this concern [1]. The processing of lignocellulosic biomass, especially from mixed agricultural and forest sources with varying composition, is currently significantly more challenging than the bioconversion of corn starch or cane sugar to ethanol [1,2]. This is due to the inherent recalcitrance of lignocellulosic biomass to enzymatic and microbial deconstruction, imparted by the partly crystalline nature of cellulose and its close association with hemicellulose and lignin in the plant cell wall [2,3]. Pretreatments that convert raw lignocellulosic biomass to a form amenable to enzymatic degradation are therefore an integral step in the production of bioethanol from this material [4]. Chemical or thermochemical pretreatments act to reduce biomass recalcitrance in various ways. These include hemicellulose removal or degradation, lignin modification and/or delignification, reduction in crystallinity and degree of polymerization of cellulose, and increasing pore volume. Biomass pretreatments are an active focus of industrial and academic research efforts, and various strategies have been developed. Among commonly studied pretreatments, organosolv pretreatment, in which an aqueous organic solvent mixture is used as the pretreatment medium, results in the fractionation of the major biomass components, cellulose, lignin, and hemicellulose into three process streams [5,6]. Cellulose and lignin are recovered as separate solid streams, while hemicelluloses and sugar degradation products such as furfural and hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) are released as a water-soluble fraction. The combination of ethanol as the solvent and