Towards transportation fuel production from food waste: Potential of biocrude oil distillates for gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel

Biocrude oil from hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) demonstrates promise as a supplement to the transportation fuel supply. However, its poor chemical (heteroatom content, energy content), physical (viscosity, density), and thermal (boiling point distribution, cetane value, cold-flow properties) characteristics limit commercial application. This study investigated the potential for the biocrude oil distillates derived from the mobile, pilot-scale HTL conversion of food waste to serve as a transportation fuel (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel) blendstock. Distillation increased the H:C (4.2-13.7%), decreased the O:C (5.5-93.5%), decreased the N:C (6.0-39.0%), and augmented the HHV (4.1-21.3%) compared to the biocrude oil, leading to values of 1.97, 0.003, 0.004, and 52.0 MJ.kg(-1), respectively. These values were similar to the H:C (1.65, 1.94, 2.02), O:C (0.02, similar to 0, similar to 0), N:C (0.0002, 0.002, 0.002), and HHV (50.0, 53.1, 53.4 MJ.kg(-1)) values of gasoline, diesel, and Jet A fuels, respectively. With respect to the physical properties, distillation decreased the density (23.8-30.5%) and viscosity (99.5-99.9%), while the acidity either increased or decreased depending on the distillation temperature. Despite the benefits of distillation, blending is still required due to the poor N:C, viscosity, and acidity of the distillates. Theoretical blending calculations determined that blending with Jet A was the most favorable blendstock, amounting to deviations of 63.3-316.6% with the Jet A fuel when the distillate proportion ranged from 10 to 50%.

Automated summary

Biocrude oil distillates derived from hydrothermal liquefaction of food waste show potential as transportation fuel blendstock after distillation to improve chemical and physical properties, but blending with other fuels is still necessary to enhance certain characteristics.