Biomass as Raw Material for Production of High‐Value Products

Industrial production of a wide range of value‐added products heavily relies on fossil resources. Lignocellulosic biomass materials are receiving increased attention as a renewable, economical, and abundant alternative to fossil resources for the production of various value‐added products. Biomass feedstocks utilized for these productions include energy crops, agricultural biomass residues, forest biomass, and food‐based biomass wastes. Various conversion technologies are used for production value‐added products from biomass. Efficiencies of conversion technologies highly depend on the types of biomass used as raw materials that differ in contents and compositions of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin structures in biomass. In some conversion technologies, such as chemical, biochemical, and hydrothermal conversion techniques, biomass materials must be first broken down into smaller molecular weight components (e.g., oligosaccharides and monosaccharides) in order to be efficiently converted into target products. In this matter, pretreatment and hydrolysis play critical roles on the yield of the product(s). The chapter describes lignocellulosic materials that are used for production of top value‐added products and conversion technologies to produce products in high yields. Future developments in the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into value‐added products are directly correlated to improvements of conversion technologies and selection the right types of biomass in the process