Pretreatment of lignocellulosic agricultural waste for delignification, rapid hydrolysis, and enhanced biogas production: A review

Abstract

Lignocellulosic biomass can play a pivotal role in achieving the goal of sustainable development of a predominantly agrarian country like India. The abundant availability of lignocellulosic materials makes it more suitable to go for the energization of this waste material. Lignocellulosic agriculture waste is essentially renewable and carbon-neutral source of energy. It has the potential to minimize greenhouse gas emissions by adopting proper biomass to energy conversion routes like biochemical conversion to mitigate climate change. Pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass is a compulsory step for delignification before hydrolysis and subsequent AD or fermentation process to facilitate enhanced biofuel (biogas/bioethanol) generation. The most studied pretreatment methods of lignocellulosic agricultural biomass in the past 10 years including acid, alkali, ionic liquid, microwave, ultrasonication, steam explosion, liquid hot water, ammonia-based, biological, and electrohydrolysis pretreatments methods are discussed in this review paper. The criteria to measure pretreatment efficiency, different pretreatment processes parameters, and their pros and cons are also discussed. The alkaline pretreatment method is most promising in the delignification of lignocellulosic agricultural biomass residues like rice straw. This review may impart help to the prospective researchers in understanding rubrics of different pretreatment processes for further research work in the area of pretreatment.