To better evaluate potential uses for grape pomace (GP) waste, a comprehensive chemical composition analysis of GP in Virginia was conducted. Eight commercial white and red pomace samples (cv. Viognier, Vidal Blanc, Niagara, Petit Manseng, Petit Verdot, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Chambourcin) obtained from different wineries in Virginia, USA were used. For extractives, GPs contained 2.89%–4.66% titratable acids, 4.32%–6.60% ash, 4.62%–12.5% lipids with linoleic acid being the predominant (59.0%–70.9%) fatty acid, 10.4–64.8 g total phenolic content (gallic acid equivalents)/kg GP, 2.09–53.3 g glucose/kg GP, 3.79–52.9 g fructose/kg GP, and trace sucrose. As for non-extractives, GPs contained 25.2%–44.5% lignin, 8.04%–12.7% glucan, 4.42%–7.05% xylan, and trace amounts of galactan, arabinan, and mannan (less than 3% in total). Potential usages of these components were further examined to provide information on better valorization of GP. Considering the valuable extractives (e.g., polyphenols and oil) and non-extractives (e.g., lignin), designing a biorefinery process aiming at fully recover and/or utilize these components is of future significance.

This review focuses on the physical disruption techniques in extracting intracellular compounds, a critical step that significantly impacts yield and purity. Traditional chemical extraction methods, though long-established, face challenges related to cost and environmental sustainability. In response to these limitations, this paper highlights the growing shift towards physical disruption methods—high-pressure homogenization, ultrasonication, milling, and pulsed electric fields—as promising alternatives. These methods are applicable across various cell types, including bacteria, yeast, and algae. Physical disruption techniques achieve relatively high yields without degrading the bioactivity of the compounds. These techniques, utilizing physical forces to break cell membranes, offer promising extraction efficiency, with reduced environmental impacts, making them attractive options for sustainable and effective intracellular compound extraction. High-pressure homogenization is particularly effective for large-scale extracting of bioactive compounds from cultivated microbial cells. Ultrasonication is well-suited for small to medium-scale applications, especially for extracting heat-sensitive compounds. Milling is advantageous for tough-walled cells, while pulsed electric field offers gentle, non-thermal, and highly selective extraction. This review compares the advantages and limitations of each method, emphasizing its potential for recovering various intracellular compounds. Additionally, it identifies key research challenges that need to be addressed to advance the field of physical extractions.

Plant biomass, the most abundant and sustainable carbon source, offers a rich chemical space to design hard carbons for sodium ion batteries. However, the compositional complexity of biomass has for a long time compromised the predictability of the structural and electrochemical properties of carbon. Using the chemical-enzymatic fractionation technique, we successively remove non-lignocellulosic components, hemicellulose and cellulose to create a suite of precursors for carbonization, in order to understand the roles of each biomass component in battery performance. Brewer's spent grain, an agricultural waste, is used as a representative biomass platform. The resulting hard carbon, with non-lignocellulosic components removed prior to carbonization, exhibits a dramatically reduced surface area and an increased specific capacity. Simultaneously removing non-lignocellulosic components and hemicellulose results in more sp² carbon, expanded (002) interlayer spacing, and a remarkably improved specific capacity by four fold. Further removing cellulose, with only lignin remaining, significantly reduces the sp² carbon and undermines the cycling stability of the derived carbon. Our finding reveals that the electrochemical properties of the biomass-derived hard carbons in sodium ion batteries may be positively correlated with cellulose and lignin but negatively impacted by non-lignocellulosic components and hemicellulose. Guided by this knowledge, we further fractionated two additional biomasses, i.e. grape pomace and walnut shells, for improving the carbon performance. After removing non-lignocellulosic components and hemicellulose, the resulting hard carbon delivers a reversible capacity of 296 mA h g⁻¹ at 50 mA g⁻¹ and retains 86.4% capacity after 200 cycles. Therefore, our results lay the foundation for unlocking the potential of biomass-derived carbon materials by precise fractionation of biomass components.