According to the challenges mentioned above, this paper gives an overview of the new technologies trends and the advances achieved in recent years, especially an integrated practical industrial technologies that can be adopted to make the production of lignocellulosic bioethanol economically attractive (Fig. 1). The integrated technologies include:
1)
Selective-fractionation technology using steam explosion pretreatment as the core technology;
2)
Synergistic enzymatic hydrolysis system;
3)
Industrial fermenting yeast strains;
4)
Pre-hydrolysis and simultaneous saccharification and co-fermentation.
Within the integrated technology, the feedstock are the cheaper substrates, which mainly include agricultural residues such as corn stover, wheat straw, rice straw and cane bagasse. On the basis of the integrated technologies, an efficient bioprocess is integrated and many side products are economic exploited, thus a large-scale commercial production of lignocellulosic bioethanol is realized.