0000000000872554
AUTHOR
Galia Alessandro
Economic sustainability of hydrothermal liquefaction of sewage sludge: From a conceptual analysis to a practical verification
Introduction: Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) could be a promising technology to produce biocrude from wet biomass. A conceptual analysis on the HTL of microalgae assisted by the use of solar heat demonstrated that even if microalgae are one of the most productive and investigated feedstock, their high cost hinders the economic sustainability of the process1. To overcome this issue a zero-cost wet waste biomass like sewage sludge (SS) could be adopted with comparable efficiency. Furthermore, the use of a proper catalyst, promoting the in-situ upgrading of the biocrude, still represents a big challenging opportunity for industrial HTL development. Aim: The outcomes of the conceptual analysis…
Effect of Microplastics in Hydrothermal Liquefaction (HTL) of Real Municipal Sludge (RMS)
The work herein was focused to study the effect of the microplastics on the yield and quality of biocrude (BC) produced by hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of real municipal sludge (RMS). HTL experiments with RMS containing 3 % w/w microplastics were conducted at 325 °C and 30 min both in the absence and in the presence of CoMo/Al2O3, NiMo/Al2O3 and activated carbon felt (ACF) as heterogeneous catalysts. A white wax was isolated from BC with a yield of 5, 8 and 6 % w/w daf when CoMo/Al2O3, NiMo/Al2O3 and ACF were used respectively. GC-MS analyses demonstrated that oleamide was present in the wax while FT-IR analyses showed the presence of chlorinated organic compounds, affecting negatively t…