Plant biomass is a highly abundant renewable resource that can be converted into several types of high-value-added products, including chemicals, biofuels and advanced materials. In the last few decades, an increasing number of biomass species and processing techniques have been developed to enhance the application of plant biomass followed by the industrial application of some of the products, during which varied technologies have been successfully developed. In this review, we summarize the different sources of plant biomass, the evolving technologies for treating it, and the various products derived from plant biomass. Moreover, the challenges inherent in the valorization of plant biomass used in high-value-added products are also discussed. Overall, with the increased use of plant biomass, the development of treatment technologies, and the solution of the challenges raised during plant biomass valorization, the value-added products derived from plant biomass will become greater in number and more valuable.

Rhodopseudomonas palustris, a purple nonsulfur bacterium, is a bacterium with the properties of extraordinary metabolic versatility, carbon source diversity and metabolite diversity. Due to its biodetoxification and biodegradation properties, R. palustris has been traditionally applied in wastewater treatment and bioremediation. R. palustris is rich in various metabolites, contributing to its application in agriculture, aquaculture and livestock breeding as additives. In recent years, R. palustris has been engineered as a microbial cell factory to produce valuable chemicals, especially photofermentation of hydrogen. The outstanding property of R. palustris as a microbial cell factory is its ability to use a diversity of carbon sources. R. palustris is capable of CO2 fixation, contributing to photoautotrophic conversion of CO2 into valuable chemicals. R. palustris can assimilate short-chain organic acids and crude glycerol from industrial and agricultural wastewater. Lignocellulosic biomass hydrolysates can also be degraded by R. palustris. Utilization of these feedstocks can reduce the industry cost and is beneficial for environment. Applications of R. palustris for biopolymers and their building blocks production, and biofuels production are discussed. Afterward, some novel applications in microbial fuel cells, microbial electrosynthesis and photocatalytic synthesis are summarized. The challenges of the application of R. palustris are analyzed, and possible solutions are suggested.

No abstract