(147c) Reaction Engineering for Hydrothermal Conversion of Biomass

Biomass, whether intentionally cultivated as a renewable resource for fuels and chemicals or generated as a waste product during manufacture of some higher value material, has a high water content. Removing the water via drying adds cost, time, and energy inputs to biomass conversion and waste valorization. Processes that accept wet, whole biomass are therefore advantaged on this front. Converting biomass in hot, compressed water (hydrothermal conversion) is one such process that has been attracting considerable attention. This talk will give an overview of how reaction engineering studies have elucidated pathways and kinetics for hydrothermal conversion of biomass. We will consider reactions of whole wet biomass such as microalgae and sludge as well as reactions of simpler model systems (e.g., polysaccharides, proteins, peptides, amino acids) that admit more fundamental investigations.