Publication Date:
2023-03-08
Description:
© The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in LeClerc, H., Tompsett, G., Paulsen, A., McKenna, A., Niles, S., Reddy, C., Nelson, R., Cheng, F., Teixeira, A., & Timko, M. Hydroxyapatite catalyzed hydrothermal liquefaction transforms food waste from an environmental liability to renewable fuel. IScience, 25(9), (2022): 104916, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.104916.
Description:
Food waste is an abundant and inexpensive resource for the production of renewable fuels. Biocrude yields obtained from hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of food waste can be boosted using hydroxyapatite (HAP) as an inexpensive and abundant catalyst. Combining HAP with an inexpensive homogeneous base increased biocrude yield from 14 ± 1 to 37 ± 3%, resulting in the recovery of 49 ± 2% of the energy contained in the food waste feed. Detailed product analysis revealed the importance of fatty-acid oligomerization during biocrude formation, highlighting the role of acid-base catalysts in promoting condensation reactions. Economic and environmental analysis found that the new technology has the potential to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 2.6% while producing renewable diesel with a minimum fuel selling price of $1.06/GGE. HAP can play a role in transforming food waste from a liability to a renewable fuel.
Description:
This work was funded by the DOE Bioenergy Technology Office (DE-EE0008513), a DOE DBIR (DE-SC0015784) and the MassCEC. The authors thank WenWen Yao, Department of Environmental Science at WPI, for TOC analysis, Mainstream Engineering for heating value characterization of the oil and solid samples, Wei Fan for assistance in obtaining SEM images and, Julia Martin and Ronald Grimm for their assistance in collecting XPS data, and Jeffrey R. Page for his assistance with oil upgrading and analysis. HOL was partially funded for this work by NSF Graduate Research Fellowship award number 2038257. A portion of this work was performed at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory Ion Cyclotron Resonance user facility, which is supported by the NSF Division of Materials Research and Division of Chemistry through DMR 16-44779 and the State of Florida.
Keywords:
Chemistry
;
Chemical engineering
;
Catalysis
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
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