Hydrothermal liquefaction of paddy straw for biocrude production

As per the MNRE statistics, the current annual availability of biomass in India is estimated to be 500 million metric tons. Most of the biomass were just dumped, burnt or reused very little. This unexploited potential of biowastes can be converted to an energy rich fuel through hydrothermal processing. Among the hydro-processing techniques, hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) process converts biomass to produce a biofuel called biocrude oil, at temperatures between 200 and 370 degrees C and at high pressures between 4 and 20 MPa in a wet environment. With biocrude as main product, the process also yields solid residues, gas and other aqueous co-products which are again a source of fuel and chemicals. Paddy straw sample of moisture 8%, volatile content 55% and fixed carbon 39% was selected. Sample trial was conducted in HTL with operating conditions of temperature 275 degrees C, pressure of 10 MPa, catalyst loading of 1% K2CO3 and retention time of 40 min. The process yielded biocrude oil of about 120 ml along with char and aqueous co-products. This biocrude extracted can be directly combusted and used as marine fuel or can be upgraded to approach existing petro-fuels. (C) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Advances in Materials Research - 2019.