ABSTRACT
The crude oil-based gasoline fuels have been widely used in the transportation sector since the 1920s. However, there have been great public concerns over the adverse environmental and human impact of these fuels. Hence, biomass-based bioethanol fuels have increasingly been used in blending gasoline fuels, in the fuel cells, and in the biochemical production in a biorefinery context. Bioethanol fuels also play a critical role in maintaining the energy security in the supply shocks related to oil price shock or wars in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The research in the fields of hydrothermal pretreatments of the biomass has also intensified in recent years as steam explosion and liquid hot water (LHW)-based hydrothermal treatments such as LHW, hot-compressed water, and autohydrolysis pretreatments of the biomass have been widely researched to increase the sugar and bioethanol yield in this context. Further, the most-prolific biomass has been agricultural residues, wood biomass, biomass constituents, and to a lesser extent biomass in general and grass biomass at the macroscale. On the other hand, the most-prolific individual biomass used in the pretreatments has been lignin, corn stover, cellulose, and to a lesser extent wheat straw, sugarcane bagasse, eucalyptus, lignocellulosic biomass, wood, hemicellulose, poplar, spruce, grass, pine, and corncobs. However, it is essential to develop efficient incentive structures for the primary stakeholders to enhance the research in this field. The scientometric analysis has been used in this context to inform the primary stakeholders about the current state of the research in a selected research field. As there have been no scientometric studies on the hydrothermal pretreatments of the biomass, this book chapter presents a scientometric study of the research in hydrothermal pretreatments of the biomass. It examines the scientometric characteristics of both the sample and population data presenting scientometric characteristics of these both datasets in the order of documents, authors, publication years, institutions, funding bodies, source titles, countries, Scopus subject categories, keywords, and research fronts, as well as highly cited 25 papers.
