**Author details**

*Biotechnological Applications of Biomass*

in the market before and after COVID-19.

**7. Conclusions**

ing industry.

**Acknowledgements**

**Conflicts of interest**

CONACYT through project CB A1-31735.

COVID-19 pandemic as well as the negative impacts and area of opportunity caused by COVID-19. Based on the report by Global Market Insight [130], the market size for nanocellulose was close to 146.7 million USD in 2019 and is expected to grow to 418.2 million USD in 2026 because the global nanocellulose market indicates an increase in demand for certain applications by 2026, like paper processing, food and beverage packaging, paint and coatings, among others. It is important to mention that the term "nanocellulose" used in this report includes micro/nanofibrillated cellulose, cellulose nanocrystals, and bacterial nanocellulose. Among the main nanocellulose manufacturing companies [128], we can mention: Fiberlan technologies (UK), Borregard (Norway), Nippon Paper Industries (Japan), Celluforce (Canada), etc. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, demand also increased in the pulp and paper industry, mainly in personal hygiene paper products, food packaging products, corrugates packaging materials, and medical specialty papers [120]. Based on the above, we can conclude that the materials obtained from lignocellulosic residues have a wide field of application and have been successfully positioning themselves

The use of lignocellulosic waste is an alternative to generate environmentally friendly products with high added value. There is a variety of methods to modify the surface of cellulose fibers both to obtain biofuels and to improve their compatibility with a polymeric matrix and in this way, develop biocomposites with high mechanical performance to be used mainly in the automotive and packaging sectors. Likewise, from the chemical treatment waste, the black liquor is generated, and it can be reused for the generation of high added-value compounds. On the other hand, lignocellulosic residues have had a high growth potential in the market in a wide variety of applications; however, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the use of some of these products mainly in medical applications and in the packag-

We want to thank to Alejandro Carreón for kind suggestions in the early version of this manuscript. The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of

The authors of this chapter do not have potential conflicts of interest.

**50**

Elizabeth Quintana Rodríguez1 , Domancar Orona Tamayo1 , José Nicacio González Cervantes1 , Flora Itzel Beltrán Ramirez1 \*, María Alejandra Rivera Trasgallo1 and Adriana Berenice Espinoza Martínez2 \*

1 Center for Applied Innovation in Competitive Technologies (CIATEC), León, Guanajuato, México

2 Center for Research in Applied Chemistry (CIQA), Saltillo, Coahuila, México

\*Address all correspondence to: fbeltran@ciatec.mx and adriana.espinoza@ciqa.edu.mx

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
