Prospects for electron-beam technology in plant biomass processing

About 200 billion tons of biomass is renewed annually; this amount is enough to satisfy the needs of the earth’s growing population for fuel, as well as for chemical and agricultural products. Russia is the leader with respect to the area of forests, which occupy more than 850 million hectares. The authors of the article published below claim that plant biomass may become the most important raw-material resource of the chemical and fuel industries already in the 21st century.