Solar hydrothermal liquefaction: Effect of the operational parameters on the fuels

Hydrothermal processing is a promising technology for being carried out at lower temperatures than pyrolysis and gasification. However, one concern is that HTP typically uses fossil-generated electricity for heating. Therefore, to reduce its environmental impact, concentrated solar energy has been proposed as a heat source. In the present work, hydrothermal liquefaction of agave bagasse was performed in a solar furnace of 25 kW. The experiments were carried out in a solar reactor specifically designed to work at maximum conditions of 220 bar and 500 degrees C. The experiments were carried out with different operational parameters of temperature (150 and 300 degrees C), initial pressure (10, 30 and 50 bar), residence time (0 and 60 min), biomass ratio (10 wt%), and average heating rate of 2 degrees C/min. The main results indicate that acetone improves the oil recovery up to 13% compared to dichloromethane and higher yields of oil were found at initial pressure of 10 bar.