Catalytic Hydrothermal Liquefaction of Wheat Straw Black Liquor: Product Analysis and Reaction Pathways
摘要
Biorefineries are essential for meeting chemical, and material demands, energy security, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development. Paper and pulp industries and bioethanol production facilities produce lignin-containing black liquor as a by-product. However, most of this black liquor is underutilised. In this study, an investigation was done to upgrade the wheat straw-extracted black liquor into high-valued biochemicals over a metal-impregnated zeolite catalyst using the hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) process. Six different HTL experiments were performed with and without copper impregnation on the HZM-5 catalyst by changing temperature between 200 and300 °C at an optimized residence time of 3 h. The balanced acid sites of copper-modified HZSM-5 are the primary rationale for this research. GC–MS, FT-IR and NMR analysis confirmed that the bio-oil produced contains mainly phenols, carboxylic acids, guaiacol catechol. It was also observed that by copper impregnation, the selectivity of producing biochemicals guaiacol and catechol were considerably increased to 86.7% and 13.3% from 66.86% and 8.65% respectively. A detailed reaction pathway was proposed for the hydrothermal liquefaction of wheat straw black liquor from product analysis.
Graphical Abstract