Effect of Reaction Temperature on Biocrude Yield from Hydrothermal Liquefaction of Rice Husk

Abstract

The annual production of rice husk worldwide is 134 Tg (134 million tons). However, rice husk is one of the least used biomasses. Rice husk can be converted to the bio-crude in a batch reactor through hydrothermal liquefaction; the effect of reaction temperature on the yield of the bio-crude was investigated herein. We ran the experiment at three different temperatures (350, 300, and 250 °C) with a holding time of 60 min. The highest biocrude yield of 0.693 kg/kg-dry was obtained at 250 °C. However, the bio-crude obtained at 300 °C had HHV of 17.98 MJ/kg. Furthermore, we attempted to extract crude oil from bio-crude using chloroform/methanol solvent at a ratio of 2:1. The highest crude oil yield of 0.222 kg/kg-dry was obtained from the bio-crude produced at 300 °C. Additionally, the production of hydro-char from bio-crude after crude oil extraction was evaluated. The results show that the highest hydro-char yield (0.611 kg/kg-dry) was produced at 250 °C.