This Research Topic is Volume II of a series. The previous volume, which has attracted over 20.4k views can be found here: Genetic Engineering, Pretreatment, Thermochemical, and Biochemconversion for Lignocellulose Valorization

The chemicals, energies and materials from lignocellulosic biomass are renewable and sustainable and have the potential to replace fossil resources. Biorefinery, a process to fractionate lignocellulose into the three basic components, is considered one of the most promising strategies to obtain bioenergy, biomaterials and biochemicals from biomass. Until now, due to the complex hierarchy and chemical structures, a tiny proportion of lignocellulose is valorized into value-added products, and most of them are burned or just discarded. Therefore, there is an urgency to exploit the pathway (including genetic, biotechnological, and chemical approaches) that can in-depth interpret the heterogeneous structure of lignocellulose and thus develop technologies that can efficiently fractionate the lignocellulose into cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin. Also, the downstream processes to convert the lignocellulose into high-value chemical products and high-performance functional materials in thermochemical conversion and biochemical conversion are needed to be explored.

The complex compositional structure of lignocellulosic biomass severely inhibited their effective conversion and selective production of high-value products. To address this issue, genetic and biotechnological approaches can be used to modify cell wall composition and change interactions between the major cell wall polymers, which would reduce the biomass recalcitrance and facilitate the subsequent fractionation and conversion of the feedstocks. Furthermore, a comprehensive understanding of its heterogeneous structure by advanced characterization of the state-of-the-art techniques is highly needed, which will guide the further fractionation of lignocellulose via efficiently breaking the biomass recalcitrance using biochemical conversion and thermochemical conversion. After obtaining the high-purity component, advanced techniques should be developed to transform lignin, cellulose and hemicelluloses into chemicals, materials or fuel. Besides, the metabolic engineering of microorganisms or catalytic fractionation strategy are also promising strategies for the effective utilization of biomass to produce various chemical and fuels. The ultimate goal of biomass utilization is to achieve the large-scale production of biofuels and biomaterials in a cost-effective and competitive manner as compared to petroleum-derived equivalents.

Original Research articles and review articles focusing on the interpretation of the inherent structure of raw materials, advanced fractionation, characterization of the isolated components, and effective conversion of lignocellulose as well as the applications of lignocellulosic materials and their derivatives are all welcome. The topical interests include, but are not limited to the following areas:
• Genetic engineering of lignocellulosic feedstocks to decrease biomass recalcitrance
• Novel and high-efficiency biomass fractionation methods for improving lignin quality and promoting the enzyme hydrolysis of cellulose
• Catalytic fractionation and depolymerization of biomass
• Metabolic engineering of microorganisms to improve the production of fuels and chemicals from biomass
• Fermentation of lignocellulose to produce alcohols or other chemicals
• Functional materials fabrication using cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin from the fractionation
• Process simulation of integrated biorefinery, techno-economic analysis (TEA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) of production of biofuels and biochemicals from biomass
• Bioenergy and biorefinery results from the pilot, demonstration, and industrial plants

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