Abstract: In order to determine the cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin contents in common cigarette paper pulps, the two-step acid hydrolysis method defined by the American National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) was optimized by taking microwave irradiation as a heating method. This fast method was applied to analyze cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin in 15 common cigarette paper pulps, including fibers from coniferous wood, broadleaf wood and flax. The results showed that:1) Compared with the traditional heating method, microwave irradiation could shorten the acid hydrolysis pretreatment by 50%(1 h). 2) Paired T-test results indicated that there was no significant difference between the results determined by the optimized and the NREL methods. 3) The contents of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin in the common cigarette paper pulps were 72.63%-92.35%, 3.74%-18.81% and 2.74%-6.30%, respectively. In general, the order of cellulose content was flax > coniferous > broadleaf, and those of hemicellulose and lignin contents were the reverse, namely broadleaf > coniferous > flax.