Hydro-Fractionation for Biomass Upgrading

Lignocellulosic biomass is mainly composed of three components including cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. A fractionation step is considered as one of the most important preliminary processes for the separation of these three components before their further utilization. Among different separation techniques, water-based pretreatments or hydro-fractionations including (a) subcritical water extraction, (b) supercritical water extraction, and (c) steam explosion have shown their promising advantages both in terms of separation efficiency and in terms of environmental friendliness. Several hydro-fractionation technologies have been developed during the last decade in which each fractionation process has different impacts on the compositional and structural features of biomass. The fractionation principle, current status, and their potential uses in the biorefinery for sugar-based chemical platform production are mainly discussed.