Mass and Energy Balances of Wet Torrefaction of Lignocellulosic Biomass

Solid handling of diverse lignocellulosic biomass feedstock is very challenging for thermochemical conversion to renewable fuels. Wet torrefaction is a pretreatment process to convert biomass to energy-dense solid fuel, with relatively uniform handling characteristics. The fuel value of the produced solid may be as much as 36% higher than that of the original biomass. In the process, biomass is reacted with hot compressed water at the temperature of 200-260 degrees C. The mass and energy balance in wet torrefaction were established for these conditions. Products include pretreated solid, precipitates (simple sugars and sugar derivatives), volatile acids, and gases (carbon dioxide). With increasing temperature, the mass of the solid decreases, the fuel value of the solid increases, and the quantity of gas increases. The heat of reaction for each temperature was estimated from an energy balance. The uncertainty analysis also showed that the temperature slightly affected the heat of reaction, which is very close to zero.