ABSTRACT
Fermentation inhibitors are toxic to cells, which is one of the bottlenecks for lignocellulose bio-refinery process. How to remove those inhibitors serves a key role in the bioconversion of lignocellulose. This article reviews the sources and the types of the inhibitors, especially the updated removal strategies including physical methods, chemical methods, biological methods and inhibitor-tolerant strain construction strategies. Based on these, we introduce a new bio-refinery model named "fractional conversion", which reduces the production of inhibitors at pretreatment stage, and a novel in situ detoxification method named "fermentation promoter exploitation technology". This review could provide new research ideas on the removal of fermentation inhibitors.