Hydrothermal Liquefaction of Palm Oil Empty Fruit Bunch (EFB) into Bio-Oil in Different Organic Solvents

Thermochemical Liquefaction of empty fruit bunch (EFB) of palm oil in different organic solvents (water, methanol, ethanol, acetone, toluene and hexane) were comparatively investigated. Experiments were carried out in an autoclave at different temperatures of 300, 350 and 400 degrees C with a fixed solid/liquid rasio of 3 gram in 50 ml solvent, without catalysts and reaction time of 5 hours. The efficiency of above solvents in terms of conversion rate, soluble liquid and carbon products were investigated in the experiments. Increasing the reaction temperature increased the conversion rate in all organic solvents and water, but gaseous products also increased using a reaction temperature of 400 degrees C. The water solvent gave higher conversion rate of 49.14%, while toluene, acetone, methanol, hexane and ethanol gave conversion of 35.76%, 26.5%, 25.98%, 24.26 %, and 22.24%, respectively. The bio-oil produced in order of the largest amount were using methanol, water, ethanol, toluene, acetone, and hexane solvents. The chemical properties of bio-oil products were significantly affected by the type of liquefaction solvent. The composition of bio-oil consisted of mostly of a mixture of organic acids, ketones, and esters. The methanol and ethanol solvents resulted in mostly esters, while toluene and hexane resulted in mostly organic acids. Acetone solvent resulted in the same amount of organic acid and esters. In water as a solvent resulted in 2-pentanone, 4-hydroxy-4-methyl. The bio-oil consisted of a range of carbon C-6 - C-20 fragments.