Biomass Steam Explosion Pretreatment for Bioproducts

Transformation of biomass into valuable bioproducts, advanced fuels and energy, requires the use of pretreatments to make subsequent biological and chemical reactions more efficient in sustainable biorefineries. Steam explosion (SE) is one of the most common pretreatment strategies because it can be carried out at the industrial case, at high solid content with limited use of chemicals and water treatment. Importantly, it has no limitations regarding the biomass species to be converted (wood chips, cereal residues such as straws or stovers).

The goal of the current Research Topic is to cover promising, recent, and novel research investigations in the steam explosion pretreatment area. Even if this pretreatment is widely studied and used, there are still open questions related to the SE chemical mechanism, characterization of reaction products, selection of process conditions depending on biomass feedstock and final products, optimization of SE to determine the best compromise between technical, environmental and economic criteria.

We welcome Original Research, Review, Mini Review and Perspective articles on themes including, but not limited to:
• Role of SE impregnation (type of chemical and duration)
• Chemical and physical biomass characterization during SE
• Impact of SE process on biological inhibitors production
• Optimisation of SE for biological conversions
• Optimisation of SE for various applications (densification, extraction, defibration etc.)
• Improvement of SE severity assessment and comparison
• Economic assessment of SE

Keywords: explosion, biomass, pretreatment, biorefinery

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.