Production of γ-valerolactone from lignocellulosic biomass for sustainable fuels and chemicals supply

Recently, valorization of lignocellulosic biomass, the most abundantly available biomass raw material on the Earth, to biofuels and chemicals has attracted great attention worldwide for the purpose of reducing our overwhelming reliance on the non-renewable petroleum resources. γ-Valerolactone (GVL) has recently been hailed as a versatile building block which can be derived from renewable lignocellulosic biomass resource for energy, chemical and material sectors. In this review, focus was principally put on the applications of GVL as a renewable carbon source for green solvents and transportation fuels. In addition, advances in the GVL production through selective reduction of commercial or biomass-derived levulinic acid (LA) and its esters using various hydrogen sources, mainly including molecule H2, formic acid (FA) and alcohols, have been carefully summarized. Moreover, assessment of the relative merits of different hydrogen sources for the GVL production has also been performed.