Effective hydrolysis for waste plant biomass impacts sustainable fuel and reduced air pollution generation: A comprehensive review Rajesh K. Srivastava a, ⁎ , Sruthy Vineed Nedungadi a , Nasim Akhtar a , Prakash Kumar Sarangi b, ⁎ , Sanjukta Subudhi c , Krushna Prasad Shadangi d , Muthusamy Govarthanan e,f a Department of Biotechnology, GITAM School of Technology, Gandhi Institute of Technology and Management (GITAM), Visakhapatnam 530045, India b College of Agriculture, Central Agricultural University, Imphal, Manipur, India c Advanced Biofuels program, The Energy and Resources Institute, Darbari Seth Block, Habitat Place, Lodhi Road, New Delhi 110 003, India d Department of Chemical Engineering, Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla, Sambalpur, Odisha, India e Department of Environmental Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41566, South Korea f Department of Biomaterials, Saveetha Dental College and Hospital, Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences, Chennai 600 077, India HIGHLIGHTS GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT • Reports on huge availability of waste plant biomass from various sources dis- cussed. • Emphasis on effective biomass pretreat- ment discusses maximum recovery of sugars. • Microbial fermentation claims high re- newable biofuel yield from hydrolysed biomass. • Emphasis on renewable fuel consumption via minimizing and utilizing waste bio- mass. • Impact of biofuel blending % in gasoline claims less air pollutants in environment. ABSTRACT ARTICLE INFO Guest Editor: Antonio Oliveira Keywords: Efficient hydrolysis Biofuels Microbial pathways Fermentation Lignocellulosic biomass Pollution control Among various natural biowastes availability in the environment, agricultural residues showed great impacts. It is due to huge availability and cheap carbon source, creating big challenges for their utility and systematic reduction. Objec- tive of this review is to address the waste biomass availability and huge quantities issues and also put effort to minimize this nutrient load via biotransforming into value-added products. Different wastes (organic/inorganic) generation with their negative issues are due to numbers of developmental and social activities, reported. Currently, various efforts are found for these wastes minimization via generation of different types of value-added products (biogas, bioH 2 , alcoholic fuel, organic acids and others products) and these wastes in municipal cities are also reported with production of ad- vanced biofuels as promising outcomes. For hydrolysis of complex organic resources including lignocellulosic bio- masses, physicochemical, structural or compositional changes are needed that aid in conversion into sugar and organic compounds such as biofuels. So, efficient and effective pretreatment processes selection (physical, biological, chemical or combined one) is critical to achieve these hydrolysis goals and resultant cellulose or hemicellulose compo- nents can be accessible by biological catalysis. These can achieve final hydrolysis and fermentative or monomer sugars. And later, synthesis of fuels or value-added products during microbial fermentation or biotransformation processes can be achieved. This review discusses pretreatment techniques for improved hydrolysis for fermentative sugar with Science of the Total Environment 859 (2023) 160260 ⁎ Corresponding authors. E-mail addresses: rajeshksrivastava73@yahoo.co.in (R.K. Srivastava), sarangi77@yahoo.co.in (P.K. Sarangi). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.160260 Received 28 June 2022; Received in revised form 6 November 2022; Accepted 14 November 2022 Available online 16 November 2022 0048-9697/© 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Science of the Total Environment journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/scitotenv