(282c) Catalytic Hydrothermal Liquefaction of Lignocellulosic Biomass for Fuels and Value-Added Products

Among several conversion technologies, thermochemical conversion technology platform can be implemented to convert lignocellulosic biomass (LCB) to fuels and value-added products. Hydrothermal Liquefaction (HTL) or catalytic HTL (CHTL) is known to effectively breakdown a complex macromolecule lignin or lignocellulosic biomass (LCB) into bioproducts such as char, bio-oil, liquid biocrude, and gases. In this study, CHTL of corn stover, corn stover derived unhydrolyzed solids (UHS) and pinewood was performed at different processing conditions of temperature, initial nitrogen pressure, biomass to water ratio, and the products generated were analyzed with varying catalyst loadings. Generated hydrochar can be used for energy storage application such as supercapacitors/batteries. Derived bio-oil or heavy bio-oil (HBO) can be made into blend fuels for electric energy production. This investigation focuses on identifying different compounds present in aqueous biocrude and identifying suitable pathways for selective enrichment or separation of value-added products such as lactic acid and phenols/substituted phenols. Solvent extraction methodology was developed to separate phenol/substituted phenols from aqueous biocrude. Lactic acid enrichment was accomplished by rotary evaporative separation, which could be polymerized into PLA. HTL processing, separation methodologies, process engineering aspects and scale-up strategies will be presented for the conversion of corn stover and UHS into value-added products.