Microbial Lipid Production from Lignocellulosic Biomass Pretreated by Effective Pretreatment

To date, much attention has been paid on developing new strategies for the valorization of abundant, inexpensive, and renewable lignocellulosic biomass into liquid biofuels and chemicals. Lipids are one kind of value-added energy-rich compounds, which can produce by oleaginous microorganisms using biomass and/or biomass-hydrolysates. Recently, the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into microbial lipid has received significant attention replacing fossil fuels. However, biomass is highly recalcitrant due to its complex structure with cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. Pretreatment of biomass is a critical process in the conversion due to the nature and structure of the biomass cell wall that is complex. Although green technologies for microbial production are advancing, the productivity and yield from these techniques are low. Over the past years, various biomass pretreatment techniques have been developed to disrupt the plant cell-wall structure of lignocellulosic biomass, facilitate subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis and microbial lipid fermentation, and successfully employed to improve biomass-to-lipid technology. In this chapter, the progress of pretreatment for enhancing the enzymatic digestion of lignocellulosic material is introduced. In addition, microbial lipid production from lignocellulosic biomass pretreated by effective pretreatment is discussed.