Hydrothermal catalytic liquefaction of corn stalk for preparation of bio-oil

The hydrothermal catalytic liquefaction of corn stalk (CS) in a 500 mL batch reactor was conducted. The influence of reaction temperature and catalyst quantity as well as reaction time on the products distribution was investigated. The main components and functional groups of bio-oil with and without catalysts were characterized by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and Fourier transform infrared spectrometry (FT-IR). The result shows that the optimal conditions of liquefaction are 15 g CS with 6.67% FeHZSM-5 at 340 ℃ for 30 min, at which the bio-oil yield reaches a maximum of 28.03% with the highest CS conversion of 81.73%. The main components of bio-oil are phenols and esters, and the HHV of the bio-oil reaches to 30.08 MJ/kg.