Hydrothermal flowthrough pretreatment of biomass and pyrolysis characteristics of residual solid

The sophisticated multi-components and densed cross-link chemical structures of lignocellulosic biomass are important bottlenecks restricting its value-added utilization. The pre-fractionation of lignocellulose components is of great significance for the fractional conversion of biomass. The present study subjected rice husk (RH) to hydrothermal treatment in a flowthrough mode and investigated the effects of hydrothermal temperature and water flowrate on the decomposition rate of RH, chemical components of residual solids and their pyrolysis characteristics. It is shown that the decomposition of RH under hydrothermal conditions conformed well to the unreacted shrinking core model with phase boundary reactions rate-controlling. The pretreatment at 180 ℃ removed 95% alkali and alkaline-earth metallic species, 92% hemicellulose and 59% lignin from RH and selectively retained most of the cellulose components. As a result of the pretreatment, the relative content of anhydrosugar (mainly levoglucosan) from pyrolysis of RH at a curie-point temperature of 445 ℃ was increased from 9.9% up to 48.2%.