“…DESs are first proposed by Abbott as a versatile alternative to ionic liquids ( Abbott et al, 2004 ), and are usually composed of a certain proportion of hydrogen bond acceptors (HBAs), such as quaternary ammonium salts and betaine, and hydrogen bond donors (HBDs), such as urea, multicomponent alcohol, and carboxylic acid ( Abbott et al, 2001 , 2004 , 2007 ), which present properties, namely, low toxicity and cost, non-volatility, high thermal stability with excellent solubility, and environmental friendliness ( Loow et al, 2017 ; Satlewal et al, 2018 ; Khan et al, 2021 ). The chemical properties of DESs are adjustable, so a targeted DES can be easily synthesized by selecting the appropriate HBD and HBA ( Khan et al, 2021 ). Based on the above-mentioned characteristics, DESs can efficiently remove lignin ( Francisco et al, 2012 ; Zhang et al, 2016a ), dissolve most of hemicellulose ( Xu et al, 2016 ; Yu et al, 2018 ), and, to a large extent, retain cellulose ( Vigier et al, 2015 ; Ren et al, 2016 ), which is beneficial to the selective separation of the three major components of lignocellulosic biomass.…”