Ricerc@Sapienza

Biochar is a green material obtained as by-product from thermochemical processes producing bio-crude from biomass such as pyrolysis and hydrothermal liquefaction. Biochar owns very interesting characterisics: it presents very high surface area with well developped porosity. It represents thus one of the best candidate to replace activated carbon in water remediation treatments. Activated carbon is, until now, the most used adsorbent in water treatments but its production from coal or biomass is still very expensive.
Goal of this project is to use the biochar produced as by-product of hydrothermal liquefaction of oak wood as adsorbent to remove organic pollutant from water. The project aims to overcome one of the big issues linked to the use of biochar for water remediation that is the difficulty of separation of powdered biochar from the acqueous solution.
To reach this objective, in the hydrothermal liquefaxction reactor we will produce in one step a magnetic biochar, easily to be recovered. The magnetic biochar comes from the use of metal Fe as catalyst in the HTL of oak wood, to enhance the bio-crude yield and quality. At the end of the reaction in fact four products are obtained: a bio-crude that is the target product of the process, a water phase with a very high carbon load, a gaseous phase rich in CO2 and a solid residue composed by the biochar and the exhausted catalyst. When Fe is used two advantages on the biochar side should be acquired; biochar has higher surface since the biomass is converted more into liquid products and it becomes magnetic.
The project will be centered on optimization of the operative condistions to be used to produce high quality bio-crude togheter with a biochar having the already mentioned characteristic. Furthermore we will analyze the efficiency of the pollutant removal process from water using two model compounds, phenol and furfural focusing on the efficiency of biochar recovering from water.