Effects of solvents on the yield and quality of bio-crude in sawdust catalytic hydrothermal liquefaction (htl)

摘要

Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) can be used to convert biomass to bio-crude, but the development of effective catalyst and low cost hydrogen supply still remain a challenge. HZSM-5 catalyst was firstly used to upgrade bio-crude to biofuel in HTL process of pine sawdust using different solvents. The effects of different solvents including ethanol, water and acetone on the yield and quality of bio-crude and gas were investigated. The results indicate that the activity of HZSM-5 to convert oxygenated compounds esters to hydrocarbons improved in supercritical ethanol solvent. Compared to water and acetone, ethanol produced the bio-crude with the highest hydrocarbons content. Compared to water and acetone solvents, the bio-crude product produced in ethanol solvent had the highest hydrocarbon content at 10.09%. Besides, ethanol solvent treatment produced the highest bio-crude yield at 58.27 wt.%. Ethanol can be a candidate solvent for production of quality biofuel from biomass HTL.