Biomass is the renewable energy source of choice for the production of liquid transportation fuels. Significant quantities of ethanol are currently being produced from corn and sugar cane via fermentation. Utilizing lignocellulosic biomass as a feedstock is seen as the next step towards significantly expanding ethanol production capacity.. However, in addition to substantial technical challenges that still have to be overcome before lignocellulose-to-ethanol becomes commercially viable, any ethanol produced by fermentation has the inherent drawback that it needs to be distilled from a mixture, which contains 82 to 94% water. Instead, direct thermochemical conversion of lignocellulosic biomass to a crude bio-oil has been proposed as an alternative, which does not require distillation, thus resulting in less energy input/unit energy output. The reaction products of such a direct thermo-chemical conversion process will be highly dependent on the reaction conditions, particularly the rate of heat transfer. Typical heating times in batch pressure vessels commonly used for thermal-chemical conversion are in the range of 30 to 60 minutes. Thus an artifact is inadvertently introduced in kinetic studies since the mix of reaction products is path dependant. To minimize these heat transfer artifacts we designed a batch pressure vessel equipped with an induction heating system, which allows the reduction of heat-up times by about two orders of magnitude, from tens of minutes to several seconds, compared to standard pressure reactors. With this system, the direct conversion of various lignocellulosic biomass including corn stover, switchgrass, and aspen pulp wood, was studied using the following treatment variables: catalysts, aqueous and organic solvents, reaction temperature, reaction time, and pressure. In addition to the liquid “bio-oil” the process also produced a gaseous phase and a solid phase. Comparisons are made of the reaction products obtained from the various sources of lignocellulosic biomass. The effect of heat transfer rate on product composition is also reported and discussed.