Dear Colleagues,

With the growing concerns regarding diminishing fossil fuels and the environmental damages that these resources involve, the search for renewable resources has attracted worldwide attention in recent years. In this sense, the use of biomass as a renewable source of carbon for the production of biofuels and valuable chemicals is a promising alternative as a substitute for fossil resources. Among different types of biomass feedstocks, lignocellulosic biomass is abundant, inexpensive, and with a low impact on the food industry, being potentially more sustainable. Lignocellulosic biomass is mainly composed of polysaccharides (30–50% cellulose, 20–35% hemicellulose, 15–30% lignin), together with minor amounts of other materials (e.g., terpenes, oils, and inorganic minerals). In the concept of developing biorefineries, significant efforts have been and are still being devoted in the field of transformation of lignocellulose for the production of high-value products. Different value-added chemicals and high-quality fuel products can be generated from lignocellulosic biomass, such as organic acids (e.g., gluconic acid, formic acid, lactic acid, levulinic acid) and alcohols (sugar alcohols, ethylene glycol, and propylene glycol) from cellulose, furfural-based compounds (e.g., 5-hydroxymethylfurfural and furfural) from cellulose and hemicellulose, and various aromatic chemicals from lignin. Moreover, some of these lignocellulose-derived chemicals can be considered platform chemicals which can be converted to other value-added compounds through various reaction routes. In this context, the use of solid catalysts in order to improve catalytic performances and reaction conditions is considered of great interest as an alternative to homogeneous catalysis due to the environmental and economic problems that this type of catalysis provokes.

Based on this, we would like to invite authors to publish papers and short reviews related to the use of heterogeneous catalysts in different reactions in order to obtain a platform or fuel products from the valorization of lignocellulosic biomass.

Prof. Dr. Rafael Luque
Dr. Eduardo J. Garcia-Suarez
Dr. Shunmugavel Saravanamurugan
Guest Editors

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• heterogeneous catalysis
• precious and nonprecious metals
• metal oxides
• nanoporous materials
• lignocellulosic biomass
• platform chemicals
• glucose
• xylose
• lignin
• furanics