Waste to Biofuels Through Zero-energy Hydrothermal Solar Plants: Process Design
Open accessAbstract
Hydrothermal processes enable an effective conversion of waste biomasses into fuels and carbonaceous materials.Covering the heat requirements with concentrated solar energy is a clever strategy to increase the plant efficiency and pursue the principles of circular economy.With the purpose of producing liquid and solid biofuels through zero-energy routes, this work presents two conceptual designs for integrating a concentration solar system (CSS) with a hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) and a hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) plant.The solar configuration used to cover hydrothermal heat requirements consists of a set of parabolic trough collectors operating with molten salts, which are used as both thermal carrier fluid and thermal energy storage medium.Two different scenarios were modelled to continuously process wood and organic wastes.In the first scenario, the CSS is coupled with a continuous HTL reactor (operating at 400 °C and 300 bar) followed by thermal cracking and hydroprocessing for upgrading bio-crude to a saleable liquid biofuel.The second scenario considers the CSS operating with a continuous HTC reactor (working at 220 °C and 24 bar) for the conversion of organic wastes into a solid fuel (hydrochar).The CSS and both the hydrothermal plants were modelled based on experimental data.Energy consumptions and techno-economic aspects were investigated.
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The techno-economic analysis of a large-scale plant consisting of a continuous HTC reactor coupled with a solar concentrator complete of thermal energy storage tanks ensures a minimum fuel selling price of the hydrochar equal to 37.4 €/ton.
“Besides, our group also performed a techno-economic analysis of a large-scale plant consisting of a continuous HTC reactor coupled with a solar concentrator complete of thermal energy storage tanks: results show that this apparatus ensures a minimum fuel selling price of the hydrochar equal to 37.4 €/ton [30].”
From Hydrothermal Carbonization of Organic Waste and Biomass: A Review on Process, Reactor, and Plant Modeling (2021) · cites this paper as [30]
Section 3.2 reports a hydrochar minimum fuel selling price of 37.4 €/ton for the solar-coupled HTC plant, but only when the analysis includes 60 €/ton of income for accepting organic waste. Without that income, the reported price is 163 €/ton. The citing sentence omits this condition and presents 37.4 €/ton as an unqualified result. (LLM, conf=0.90)
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Research works printed but not linked: 6
- Castello, D., Pedersen, T.H., Rosendahl, L.A., 2018, Continuous hydrothermal liquefaction of biomass: A critical review, Energies 11. Coastal, 2009. HITEC ® Heat Transfer Salt, Coastal Chemical Company.
- Incropera, F., P., Bergman T.L., Lavine A.S., DeWitt D.P. 2017, Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer, New York : Wiley.
- Klasing, F., Odenthal, C., Trost, B., Hirsch, T., Bauer, T., 2018, Techno-economic assessment for large scale thermocline filler TES systems in a molten salt parabolic trough plant, AIP Conf. Proc. 2033.
- Merzari, F., Lucian, M., Volpe, M., Andreottola, G., Fiori, L., 2018, Hydrothermal carbonization of biomass: Design of a bench-scale reactor for evaluating the heat of reaction, Chem. Eng. Trans. 65, 43-48.
- Smith, R., 2005, Chemical Process Design and Integration, John Wiley & Sons.
- Volpe, M., Fiori, L., Volpe, R., Messineo, A., 2016, Upgrading of olive tree trimmings residue as biofuel by hydrothermal carbonization and torrefaction: A comparative study, Chem. Eng. Trans. 50, 13-18.
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Ischia, G., & Fiori, L. (2021) · Waste and Biomass Valorization · doi:10.1007/s12649-020-01255-3 · Cited by 234 · see citing works
Self-citation
- Authors
- Ischia, G., Castello, D., Orlandi, M., Miotello, A., Rosendahl, L. A., & Fiori, L.
- Affiliations
- University of Trento (IT)
- Aalborg University (DK)
- Venue
- Chemical engineering transactions
- Publisher
- AIDIC-Italian Association of Chemical Engineering
- Published
- 2020-01-01
- ISSN
- 1974-9791 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3161518414
- Cited by
- 9
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2025: 3 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 2 · 2020: 2
- FWCI
- 0.31
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- Locations
- Chemical engineering transactions (publishedVersion)
- Institutional Research Information System (Università degli Studi di Trento) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- VBN Forskningsportal (Aalborg Universitet) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Thermochemical Biomass Conversion Processes
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Chemical Looping and Thermochemical Processes
- Physical Sciences › Energy › Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment › Solar Thermal and Photovoltaic Systems
- Keywords
- hydrothermal liquefaction, hydrothermal carbonization, concentrated solar energy, parabolic trough collector, molten salt thermal energy storage, biofuel production, hydrochar, thermal cracking, wood waste, organic waste, techno-economic analysis, circular economy
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