Organosolv Pretreatment

Organosolv pretreatment processing involves the use of aqueous organic solvents such as ethanol, methanol, hexane, acetone and inorganic acid catalysts such as hydrochloric acid (HCl) or sulfuric acid (H2SO4) to break the internal lignin and hemicellulose bonds. Organosolv pretreatments, as with other chemical pretreatments, often produce microbial inhibitory agents because it is usually performed at higher temperature (above 180°C) and can require large amounts of pretreatment reagents (Zhu et al. 2010). The organic solvents dissolve lignin and hemicellulose and leave the biomass residue with high cellulose content. The lignin and hemicellulose recovered from the organic solvent have a potential market value (see Table 2).