Lignocellulosic biomass obtaining process

Alonso et have eliminated pre-treatment steps to fractionate biomass. They made use of certain composition in biomass to obtain fuels and chemicals, and the rest of fraction was separated. The work used gamma-valerolactone (GVL) as solvent, and the cellulosic fraction of lignocellulosic biomass can be converted into levulinic acid (LA), while at the same conditions the hemicellulose fraction can be converted into furfural. The furfural can be separated by distillation during the reaction or can be kept in the reactor and subsequently processed to produce furfutyl alcohol and LA. The lignin was solubilized in the GVL and separated. This process not only obtains the production of fuels and chemicals by utilization of hemicellulose and cellulose, but also it benefits from the elimination of pre-treatment and extraction/separation steps. 

Second-generation biofuel technologies make use of a much wider range of biomass feedstock (e.g., forest residues, biomass waste, wood, woodchips, grasses and short rotation crops, etc.) for the production of ethanol biofuels based on the fermentation of lignocellulosic material, while other routes include thermo-chemical processes such as biomass gasification followed by a transformation from gas to liquid (e.g., synthesis) to obtain synthetic fuels similar to diesel. The conversion processes for these routes have been available for decades, but none of them have yet reached a high scale commercial level. 

Lignocellulosics are the most abundant renewable organic materials in the biosphere. They account for approx 50% of the total biomass in the world, with an estimated annual production of 1-50 x 1091 (4). Lignocellu-losic materials, particularly the residues obtained from wood processing, are usually much cheaper than sugar- and/or starch-derived feedstock, such as sugarcane and corn. They also have no competitive use as human or animal foodstuffs. 

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