Catalytic potency of ionic liquid-stabilized metal nanoparticles towards greening biomass processing: Insights, limitations and prospects

The green approach of the one-pot enzyme-assisted biomass deconstruction for the production of biofuels and high-value added chemicals in the presence of combined ionic liquids with metal nanoparticles (CILMNPs) process is receiving more interest in biomass-to-energy research. This paper gives a succinct overview of the recent applications of CILMNPs in the pretreatment of lignin-based biomass for macro-cellular deconstruction at the one-pot scale and then holistically addresses the multifarious research hurdles, challenges and prospects which have to be addressed to achieve the green merits on a larger scale of processing. Once the one-pot green metrics will be matched by their corresponding process metrics, the potential for pilot-scale production and eventually industrial utilization of CILMNPS will take good shape. Furthermore, such process scale-up campaigns using CILMNPS for biomass depolymerization will have to be robustly designed for an effective and efficient application by selecting bioprocesses involving enzymatic hydrolysis, saccharification and deoxygenation/hydrodeoxygenation routes operated under continuous regimes. These tasks will demand considerable applied research efforts in the form of process intensification and optimization both at the one-pot scale and for prospective large-scale bioprocessing units. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.