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

• Published in: Bioresource technology Vol. 223; no. C; pp. 91 - 97
• Main Authors: Muppaneni, Tapaswy, Reddy, Harvind K., Selvaratnam, Thinesh, Dandamudi, Kodanda Phani Raj, Dungan, Barry, Nirmalakhandan, Nagamany, Schaub, Tanner, Omar Holguin, F., Voorhies, Wayne, Lammers, Peter, Deng, Shuguang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01.01.2017; Elsevier
• Subjects: Algae biocrude; Catalyst; Catalytic hydrothermal liquefaction; Elemental analysis; Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry - methods; Microalgae - chemistry; Temperature; Water - chemistry; Algae biocrude; Catalyst; Catalytic hydrothermal liquefaction; Elemental analysis
• ISSN: 0960-8524; 1873-2976
• DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2016.10.022

[Display omitted] •Hydrothermal liquefaction of Cyanidioschyzon merolae and the influence of catalysts were investigated.•Biocrude oil yield increased with temperature and with addition of catalysts.•A correlation has been developed between the biochemical composition of algae and biocrude oil yield.•Catalysts in HTL mixture improved the carbohydrate and soluble protein extraction in the water phase. 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.