It is also known that the profitability of a low-value biofuel-producing biorefinery can be supported by integrated production of high-value chemicals. One of the high-value chemicals as defined by the Department of Energy of the United States (US-DOE), which can fulfill this approach, is xylitol. Xylitol is a natural sweetener, which has been highly valued for its important applications in food, odontological, and pharmaceutical industries, and as a platform chemical for the synthesis of other valuable chemicals. Currently,
commercial production of xylitol is based on catalytic hydrogenation of xylose purified from hemicellulosic hydrolyzates,
a process thatis considered to be inefficient and expensive due to the complexity of the xylose purification procedure