In
recent years, hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) has been introduced
as an attractive method for converting biomass into value-added products.
The complex reaction chemistry and variable composition of biomass
have, however, been barriers to find general equations for describing
the HTC process. The goal of this study is to establish a link between
the composition of biomass and the expected hydrochar from HTC. Based
on the experimental design found from response surface methodology,
the biomass components, namely pure cellulose, hemicellulose, and
lignin, were submitted in different combinations into 39 HTC experiments
with severity factors (SFs) of 3.83, 5.01, and 6.19. Using the experimental
data, an attempt was then made to predict the mass yield, higher heating
value (HHV), carbon content (C%), and energy recovery factor of the
hydrochars according to the biomass composition and the process severity.
The results revealed that the interactions between the biomass components
do not have a major effect on the hydrochar characteristics, whereas
the interaction between cellulose and SF is the most significant.
Moreover, it was shown that, after the lignin content, the hemicellulose
content has the highest positive impact on HHV and C% of the hydrochar.
An optimization study showed that, with a focus on minimizing the
SF while the HHV is maximized, biomass with a cellulose content of
40%, hemicellulose of 35%, and lignin of 25%, under the severity of
4.41 will be the most suitable case for HTC treatment. Finally, a
comparison between the predictions and the experimental data in the
literature suggests that the proposed equations can provide a good
evaluation on the HTC of several biomass feedstocks, especially when
the amount of ash and extractives are low.