Biomass with high lipid content is an attractive feedstock for producing renewable fuels. The most energy-intensive and costly stage in the production of fuels from this feedstock is extraction and purification of oils. Developing inexpensive and robust oil extraction and purification methods is a major challenge facing biofuel industries.In this study, we attempted to develop a novel integrated oil extraction process that includes hydrothermal pretreatment and oil extraction (HPOE) steps followed by hydrothermal carbonization of the extracted oilseeds. HPOE provides several major advantages over conventional processes: higher oil yield, shorter extraction time, tolerance to moisture, avoiding preparation stages, and utilization of the extracted solid residue for biochar production.Four types of oil seeds were used for HPOE study. In the first step, the seeds were subjected to hydrothermal pretreatment in a batch reactor in the range of temperatures of 120 to 210 �C for 30 min. In the second step, the pretreated seeds were extracted with n-hexane in a Soxhlet apparatus for 15-120 min. The oil yields from the seeds pretreated at 180 and 210 �C were significantly higher (up to 30%) than those of respective ground seeds.In order to add value to the oils extracted in the proposed process, the extracted solids were subjected to hydrothermal carbonization at 300 �C with the aqueous phase recycled after the pretreatment step. The obtained biochar had high heating value of 26.3-26.6 MJ/kg comparable to that of bituminous coal.The effects of pretreatment temperature (from 120 to 210 �C) and extraction time (from 15 to 120 min) on oil extraction efficiency were studied. The complete mass and energy balances of HPOE process were developed. The results of this study show that the proposed integrated process can be an efficient way of simultaneous oil extraction and solid fuels production from different oilseeds.

Novel integrated process for producing oil and biochar from oilseeds

247th National Meeting (2014)

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