Hydrothermal liquefaction of Cyanidioschyzon merolae and the influence of catalysts on products

Tapaswy Muppaneni; Harvind K Reddy; Thinesh Selvaratnam; Kodanda Phani Raj Dandamudi; Barry Dungan; Nagamany Nirmalakhandan; Tanner Schaub; F Omar Holguin; Wayne Voorhies; Peter Lammers; Shuguang Deng

doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2016.10.022

Hydrothermal liquefaction of Cyanidioschyzon merolae and the influence of catalysts on products

Bioresour Technol. 2017 Jan:223:91-97. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2016.10.022. Epub 2016 Oct 14.

Affiliations

¹ Chemical and Materials Engineering Department, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA; School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA.
² Chemical and Materials Engineering Department, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA.
³ School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA.
⁴ Plant and Environmental Sciences, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA.
⁵ Civil Engineering Department, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA.
⁶ Chemical Analysis and Instrumentation Laboratory, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA.
⁷ Molecular Biology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA.
⁸ Chemical and Materials Engineering Department, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA; School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA. Electronic address: shuguang.deng@asu.edu.

PMID: 27788432
DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2016.10.022

Abstract

This work investigates the hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of Cyanidioschyzon merolae algal species under various reaction temperatures and catalysts. Liquefaction of microalgae was performed with 10% solid loading for 30min at temperatures of 180-300°C to study the influences of two base and two acid catalysts on HTL product fractions. Maximum biocrude oil yield of 16.98% was obtained at 300°C with no catalyst. The biocrude oil yield increased to 22.67% when KOH was introduced into the reaction mixture as a catalyst. The algal biocrude and biochar has a higher heating values (HHV) of 32.22MJkg^-1 and 20.78MJkg^-1 respectively when no catalyst was used. Gas chromatography time of flight mass spectrometry (GC/TOFMS) was employed to analyze the biocrude oil composition, and elemental analysis was performed on the algae, biocrude and biochar samples. Analysis of the HTL aqueous phase revealed the presence of valuable products.

Keywords: Algae biocrude; Catalyst; Catalytic hydrothermal liquefaction; Elemental analysis.

MeSH terms

Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry / methods
Microalgae / chemistry*
Temperature*
Water* / chemistry

Substances

Water