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 and biohydrogen fuel 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. The research in the fields of biomass pretreatments has also intensified in recent years as biological, chemical, and, to a lesser extent, mechanical and hydrothermal pretreatments of the biomass have been widely researched to increase the sugar and bioethanol yield in this context. On the individual terms, the most prolific pretreatments have been enzymatic hydrolysis and enzymatic, acid, ionic liquid, fungal, alkaline, other chemical, hydrothermal, and to a lesser extent steam explosion, ammonia, organic solvent, microbial, hot compressed water, milling, liquid hot water, and microwave pretreatments. Further, the most prolific biomass has been biomass constituents, biomass, in general, agricultural residues, wood and a lesser extent grass biomass at the macroscale and cellulose, lignin, lignocellulosic biomass at large, biomass at large, corn stover, lignocellulose, other residues, softwood, wheat straw, switchgrass, sugarcane bagasse, and hemicellulose at the microscale. 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 biomass pretreatments, this book chapter presents a scientometric study of the research in biomass pretreatments. It examines the scientometric characteristics of both the sample and population data presenting scientometric characteristics of both datasets in the order of documents, authors, publication years, institutions, funding bodies, source titles, countries, Scopus subject categories, keywords, and research fronts.
