Parametric study of hydrothermal treatment of biomass to produce biofuels

摘要

The rapid increase in consumption of fossil fuels has been critiqued predominantly for its fleeting diminution and increasing pollution. Hence, the demand of alternate renewable sources such as biofuels has been considered as a promising low pollution solution. Biomass is composed of the green carbon i.e. composed of carbon that belongs to present biological cycle making it a cleaner renewable fuel. Lignocellulosic biomass mainly derived from agricultural and forest can be processed through pyrolysis, gasification, steam reforming and hydrothermal treatment to obtain advanced biofuels. Predominantly all biomass materials contain high moisture which makes the hydrothermal treatment as the most effective technique for conversion of biomass to bio-oil and bio-char. In this work, hydrothermal treatment process was used for depolymerization of lignocellulosic biomass into liquid, solid and gaseous fuels at moderate temperature and high pressure. The key focus of this research work is to optimize the hydrothermal treatment conditions to maximize the biofuel production in terms of product quality and quantity and compare the product quality for various feed-stock such as corn stover, wheat straw and forest residue such as poplar and aspen at optimized condition. The main operating parameters to investigate include feed particle size, feed composition, temperature, pressure, and residence time. The experiments were performed in a Parr 4848 high pressure autoclave batch reactor with nitrogen as inert medium; and final slurry is processed to obtain bio-oil and bio-char. Characterization tests were performed for analysis of the bio-oil and bio-char properties. As per preliminary conditions, the bio-oil obtained varies between 31.2wt.% to 50.26wt.% and the bio-char yield varies between 21.6wt.% to 30.21wt.%. Furthermore, the bio-char is being tested for capturing mercury from flue gas.