Current perspective on pretreatment technologies using lignocellulosic biomass: An emerging biorefinery concept

A critical factor which controls the socio-economic development of any nation is “energy”. With depleting fossil fuels, there is a shift in focus to lignocellulosic biorefinery. The review aims to present an insight on currently available pre-treatment technologies for deconstruction and fractionation of lignocellulosic biomass for development of lignocellulosic feedstock based biorefinery. These bio-refineries facilitate generation of biofuels and value-added products e.g. sugar, bioethanol. Thus, in order to improve the sugar and subsequent biofuel yield, several pretreatment techniques have been investigated and have been categorized into physical, chemical, physicochemical and biological methods. The current status of each pretreatment technology on sugar and biofuel yield along with their limitations has been discussed. The present study will enable better understanding of already available processes and help overcome the limitations and develop an improvised technology to ease the pretreatment process to make the concept of biorefinery a reality.