Hydrothermal Pretreatment Using Supercritical CO 2 in the Biorefinery Context

Supercritical fluids have been receiving an increasing attention in biorefinery processes due to guarantying high reaction yields and selectivities. In addition, supercritical fluids, especially CO2, permit to avoid the use of additional catalyst simplifying downstream processing. These benefits are a result of their unique physicochemical proprieties, which are easily adjustable just by slight changes of operational temperature and pressure.