Investigation of bio-oil produced by hydrothermal liquefaction of food waste using ultrahigh resolution Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry

Recent research has revealed that more than 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted globally every year. The disposal of such huge biomass has become a challenge. In the present paper, we report the production of the bio-oil by hydrothermal liquefaction of three classes of food waste: meat, cheese and fruits. The highest yield of the bio-oil was observed for meat (similar to 60%) and cheese (similar to 75%), while for fruits, it was considerably low (similar to 10%). The molecular composition of the obtained bio-oil was investigated using ultrahigh resolution Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance mass spectrometry and was found to be similar to that obtained from algae. Several thousand heteroatom compounds (N, N-2, ON2, etc. classes) were reliably identified from each sample. It was found that bio-oils produced from meat and cheese have many compounds (similar to 90%) with common molecular formulas, while bio-oil produced from fruits differs considerably (similar to 30% of compounds are unique).