Hydrthermal liquefaction (HTL) is a thermochemical treatment technique which applies moderate temperature and high pressure to convert a broad range of wet biomass feedstocks to biocrude.  The biocrude product can then be upgraded via catalytic hydrotreatment to yield transport fuels including diesel, gasoline and aviation fuel.  HTL technology has the potential to produce sustainable transport fuels from waste materials that present significant disposal costs, such as sewage sludge and other municipal wastes.  However, HTL is an emerging technology which requires significant further development in order to transition from laboratory to industrial scale.  One aspect of this is to understand the circumstances under which reactor plugging occurs, and how best to avoid them.  The current study investigates various HTL feeds and the impact of their compositional and flow properties on reactor plugging.  The study of these feeds is conducted in unison with physical and operational reactor properties such as reactor diameter, heating profile, and flow rate.  A novel modular reactor system was designed and built to facilitate rapid plugging and unplugging, allowing for a broad range of reaction conditions to be feasibly evaluated, and the location of the blockage to be determined and resolved. The results obtained in this work will assist in designing both HTL feeds and reactor systems that help to mitigate the financial risks of upscaling this emerging technology.

Study of continuous-flow hydrothermal liquefaction reactor plugging causes and their mitigation

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ACS Fall 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.