The plant cell wall biopolymers lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose are potential renewable sources of clean biofuels and high-value chemicals. However, the complex 3D structure of lignocellulosic biomass is recalcitrant to deconstruction. Major efforts to overcome this recalcitrance have involved pretreating biomass before catalytic processing. This Perspective describes recent work aimed at elucidating the molecular-level physical phenomena that drive biomass assembly. These are at play in commonly employed aqueous-based and thermochemical pretreatments. Several key processes have been found to be driven by biomass solvation thermodynamics, an understanding of which therefore facilitates the rational improvement of methods aimed at the complete solubilization and fractionation of the major biomass components.

植物细胞壁生物聚合物木质素，纤维素和半纤维素是清洁生物燃料和高价值化学品的潜在可再生资源。但是，木质纤维素生物质的复杂3D结构难以分解。克服这种顽固性的主要努力涉及在催化处理之前对生物质进行预处理。本《观点》描述了旨在阐明驱动生物量组装的分子水平物理现象的最新工作。这些在常用的水基和热化学预处理中起作用。已发现生物质溶剂化热力学驱动着几个关键过程，因此，对它们的理解有助于合理地改进旨在使主要生物质组分完全溶解和分级分离的方法。