Role of Pretreatment Approaches to Generate Value-Added Products Using Agriculture Biomass

Global attempts are currently being made to develop sustainable value-added products that utilize renewable agro-waste biomass feedstock. Most of this biomass constituted biological carbohydrate polymers such as lignin, cellulose, and hemicellulose. These constituent components are interconnected through hydrogen and covalent bonding, which results in a very complicated and rigid structure of biomass. This complicated and rigid structure of biomass limits its use in the extraction of value-added constituent components. Biomass pretreatment thus becomes important since it entails structural modification to get over its resistant nature needed for the extraction of constituent components. A number of physical, physiochemical, chemical, and biological methods can be used for the pretreatment of biomass. In this chapter, the use of various pretreatment methods for the derivation of value-added products from agro-waste biomass, their mechanism, advantages, and disadvantages are discussed.