Key Methods for Pretreatment of Lignocellulosic Biomass - An Overview

Biofuels can be produced from almost all types of lignocellulosic materials, such as forest residues, wood or agricultural. Lignocellulosic biomass can be the potential substitute to gasoline. There are many factors that cause hindrance to hydrolysis of cellulose present in biomass to fermentable sugars that can further be used to produce biofuel. The goal of pretreatment is to make the cellulose accessible to hydrolysis for conversion to fuels. There are several pretreatment methods that modify the physical and chemical arrangement of the lignocellulosic biomass and improve the rate of hydrolysis. From the past few decades a huge number of pretreatment methods have been evolved including acidic pretreatment, ammonia explosion, alkaline pretreatment etc. In this review, different pretreatment methods have reported.