biochemical
production. Pretreatment is an essential component of biomass conversion process, affecting a majority
of downstream processes, including enzymatic hydrolysis, fermentation, and final product separation.
Organic solvent pretreatment is recognized as an emerging way ahead because of its inherent advantages,
such as the ability to fractionate lignocellulosic biomass into cellulose, lignin, and hemicellulose components
with high purity, as well as easy solvent recovery and solvent reuse. Objectives of this review were
to update and extend previous works on pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass for biofuels and biochemicals
using organic solvents, especially on ethanol, methanol, ethylene glycol, glycerol, acetic acid,
and formic acid. Perspectives and recommendations were given to fully describe implementation of
proper organic solvent pretreatment for future research.