Microwave (MW) heating is attracting great attention in biorefinery processes, because of its special dipole rotation heating mechanism. In the current study, MW and conventional heating methods were employed to assist the thermochemical pretreatments (H₂O, H₂SO₄ or NaOH) of maize stem biomass. Their influences on sugar release and biomass compositions during pretreatments were comparably evaluated. Compared to conventional heating pretreatment, MW thermochemical pretreatments are highly efficient in sugar recovery, contributing to 4.3 times higher amount of sugar release (1.25 vs 0.30 μmol/mg biomass) with reaction time 8 times shorter (5 vs 40 min) and selectively producing glucose as the major constituent (0.75 μmol/mg biomass) using 0.2 M H₂SO₄ as pretreatment media. MW thermochemical pretreatment also effectively removed lignin (up to 91.6 %) within 5 min, which was significantly higher than conventional heating pretreatment (51.2 %). Conventional heating pretreatment successfully removed hemicellulose and converted the crystalline cellulose into amorphous cellulose, which is probably due to its longer heating time. Rapid MW thermochemical pretreatments efficiently fractionated hemicellulose and removed lignin content while keeping the crystalline cellulose structure. MW and conventional heating pretreatments led to similar digestibility of biomass solid residues. Overall, MW thermochemical pretreatment represents an energy efficient alternative strategy, as it consumed 25–34 folds less energy than conventional heating pretreatment for effective biomass fractionation and value-added chemical production.

微波（MW）加热由于其特殊的偶极子旋转加热机制而在生物精炼过程中引起了极大的关注。在当前的研究中，采用兆瓦和常规加热方法来辅助玉米茎生物量的热化学预处理（H ₂ O，H ₂ SO ₄或NaOH）。比较了它们在预处理过程中对糖释放和生物量组成的影响。与常规加热预处理相比，MW热化学预处理在糖的回收方面非常高效，使糖释放量提高了4.3倍（1.25 vs 0.30μmol/ mg生物质），反应时间缩短了8倍（5 vs40分钟），并使用0.2 MH ₂ SO ₄选择性地产生葡萄糖作为主要成分（0.75μmol/ mg生物质）作为预处理介质。兆瓦热化学预处理还可以在5分钟内有效去除木质素（高达91.6％），这明显高于常规加热预处理（51.2％）。常规的加热预处理成功地除去了半纤维素，并将结晶纤维素转化为无定形纤维素，这可能是由于其较长的加热时间。快速兆瓦热化学预处理可有效地分馏半纤维素并去除木质素含量，同时保持结晶纤维素的结构。兆瓦和常规加热预处理导致类似的生物质固体残留物的消化率。总体而言，兆瓦级热化学预处理代表了一种节能的替代策略，