Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) is one of the interesting pretreatment processes to treat biomass because it is a sustainable and economic process. The HTC process used to convert biomass into a highly carbon-rich solid product called hydrochar. This process can improve the quality and increase the carbon content of hydrochar, resulting in higher thermal stability. Furthermore, hydrothermal carbonization process can fix the active elements during activation step, thus, possible for further investigation on the preparation of porous N-doped active carbons. Agricultural biomass residues such as palm shell, bamboo, corncob, and other crops are abundant in some countries. In this study, palm shell and bamboo were selected as precursors for producing a high carbon hydrochar. The palm shell and bamboo were treated by hydrothermal carbonization process in temperature range 180 - 250<sup>o</sup>C under auto-generated pressure of aqueous media within a short time. The results show that, as expected, increasing HTC temperature led to a decrease in the yield of hydrochar, but the carbon content in hydrochar is increased. Similar trend is also observed with the reaction time is longer. The hydrochar from bamboo provided the highest carbon content of 71.3 w/w% after hydrothermal carbonization at 250<sup>o</sup>C for 6 h.

Preparation of high carbon content of hydrochar from biomass via hydrothermal carbonization

2019 Fall National Meeting

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