Hydrothermal Carbonization of Corn Stover: Structural Evolution of Hydro-Char and Degradation Kinetics

Hydrothermal processing of biomass may be able to overcome a series problems associated with the thermochemical conversion lignocellulosic material into energy and fuels. Investigating process parameters an adequate description is one first steps being design optimize certain treatment concept. In present article, we studied evolution respect reaction time in order evaluate structure changes kinetics corn stover decomposition hydrothermal reactor. The effect biomass-to-H2O ratio was also investigated. A pilot-scale reactor 18.75 L used conduct runs at 250 °C different times (60, 120 240 min) ratios (1:10, 1:15 1:20). Solid phase products were characterized by thermogravimetry (TG), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), elemental composition (EDX), crystalline phases X-ray diffraction (XRD) surface area (BET). For experiments constant time, yields hydro-char, aqueous gaseous varied between 31.08 35.82% (wt.), 54.59 60.83% (wt.) 8.08 9.58% respectively. hydro-char gases tend increase higher ratios, while are lower when using ratios. As expected, liquid times, but there reduction yields. TG showed that 60 min not enough completely degrade stover, presented similar results, indicating optimized min. SEM images, XRD carbonization stover. analysis obtained °C, 2.0 °C/min, 1:10 4.35 m2/g, pore volume 18.6 mm3/g average width 17.08 μm. kinetic degradation or bio-char formation correlated pseudo-first-order exponential model, exhibiting root-mean-square error (r2) 1.000, demonstrating hot-compressed H2O, expressed as formation, well described decay kinetics.