Emerging trends and nanotechnology advances for sustainable biogas production from lignocellulosic waste biomass: A critical review

Silver nanoparticles (NPs) have been the subjects of researchers because of their unique properties (e.g., size and shape depending optical, antimicrobial, and electrical properties). A variety of preparation techniques have been reported for the synthesis of silver NPs; notable examples include, laser ablation, gamma irradiation, electron irradiation, chemical reduction, photochemical methods, microwave processing, and biological synthetic methods. This review presents an overview of silver nanoparticle preparation by physical, chemical, and biological synthesis. The aim of this review article is, therefore, to reflect on the current state and future prospects, especially the potentials and limitations of the above mentioned techniques for industries.

Lignocellulosic feedstock materials are the most abundant renewable bioresource material available on earth. It is primarily composed of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin, which are strongly associated with each other. Pretreatment processes are mainly involved in effective separation of these complex interlinked fractions and increase the accessibility of each individual component, thereby becoming an essential step in a broad range of applications particularly for biomass valorization. However, a major hurdle is the removal of sturdy and rugged lignin component which is highly resistant to solubilization and is also a major inhibitor for hydrolysis of cellulose and hemicellulose. Moreover, other factors such as lignin content, crystalline, and rigid nature of cellulose, production of post-pretreatment inhibitory products and size of feed stock particle limit the digestibility of lignocellulosic biomass. This has led to extensive research in the development of various pretreatment processes. The major pretreatment methods include physical, chemical, and biological approaches. The selection of pretreatment process depends exclusively on the application. As compared to the conventional single pretreatment process, integrated processes combining two or more pretreatment techniques is beneficial in reducing the number of process operational steps besides minimizing the production of undesirable inhibitors. However, an extensive research is still required for the development of new and more efficient pretreatment processes for lignocellulosic feedstocks yielding promising results.