Elemental migration and characterization of products during hydrothermal liquefaction of cornstalk

Zhangbing Zhu; Buchun Si; Jianwen Lu; Jamison Watson; Yuanhui Zhang; Zhidan Liu

doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2017.06.085

Elemental migration and characterization of products during hydrothermal liquefaction of cornstalk

Bioresour Technol. 2017 Nov:243:9-16. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2017.06.085. Epub 2017 Jun 19.

Authors

Zhangbing Zhu¹, Buchun Si¹, Jianwen Lu¹, Jamison Watson², Yuanhui Zhang³, Zhidan Liu⁴

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory of Environment-Enhancing Energy (E2E) and Key Laboratory of Agricultural Engineering in Structure and Environment, Ministry of Agriculture, College of Water Resources and Civil Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, China.
² Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
³ Laboratory of Environment-Enhancing Energy (E2E) and Key Laboratory of Agricultural Engineering in Structure and Environment, Ministry of Agriculture, College of Water Resources and Civil Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, China; Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
⁴ Laboratory of Environment-Enhancing Energy (E2E) and Key Laboratory of Agricultural Engineering in Structure and Environment, Ministry of Agriculture, College of Water Resources and Civil Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, China. Electronic address: [email protected].

PMID: 28651143
DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2017.06.085

Abstract

Biofuel production from lignocellulosic biomass through hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) is a promising direction. This study characterized the products and investigated the elemental migration during the HTL of cornstalk at seven different operation temperatures (210-375°C). The biocrude oil yield significantly increased from 7.04% (210°C) to 23.32% (290°C) as the temperature increased, and decreased to 21.07% when further increased to 375°C. A carbon recovery of 11.03-38.69%, and a hydrogen recovery of 7.77-25.61% were achieved in the biocrude oil. Hydrogen (27.87-70.94%) and nitrogen (74.56-81.76%) were effectively recovered in the aqueous phase. GC-MS, HPLC, TGA and FT-IR analysis indicated that major organic compounds in the biocrude oil were interestingly similar between 210°C and 270°C. The identified compounds included hydrocarbons, esters and carboxylic acid. The calculative yields of biocrude, hydrogen, methane and biochar reached 7.04-23.32, 0.07-0.29, 7.12-12.08 and 3.01-22.42t/100t cornstalks, respectively.

Keywords: Biocrude production; Biorefinery; Cornstalk; Elemental migration; Hydrothermal liquefaction.

MeSH terms

Biofuels*
Biomass
Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared
Temperature
Zea mays*

Substances

Biofuels