Hydrothermal Carbonization of Organic Waste and Biomass: A Review on Process, Reactor, and Plant Modeling
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REVIEW
Hydrothermal Carbonization of Organic Waste and Biomass: A Review on Process, Reactor, and Plant Modeling Giulia Ischia1 · Luca Fiori1 Received: 23 February 2020 / Accepted: 21 September 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) is an emerging path to give a new life to organic waste and residual biomass. Fulfilling the principles of the circular economy, through HTC “unpleasant” organics can be transformed into useful materials and possibly energy carriers. The potential applications of HTC are tremendous and the recent literature is full of investigations. In this context, models capable to predict, simulate and optimize the HTC process, reactors, and plants are engineering tools that can significantly shift HTC research towards innovation by boosting the development of novel enterprises based on HTC technology. This review paper addresses such key-issue: where do we stand regarding the development of these tools? The literature presents many and simplified models to describe the reaction kinetics, some dealing with the process simulation, while few focused on the heart of an HTC system, the reactor. Statistical investigations and some life cycle assessment analyses also appear in the current state of the art. This work examines and analyzes these predicting tools, highlighting their potentialities and limits. Overall, the current models suffer from many aspects, from the lack of data to the intrinsic complexity of HTC reactions and HTC systems. Therefore, the emphasis is given to what is still necessary to make the HTC process duly simulated and therefore implementable on an industrial scale with sufficient predictive margins. Graphic Abstract
Keywords Hydrothermal carbonization · Modeling · Reaction kinetics · Simulation
Statement of Novelty
* Luca Fiori [email protected] 1
Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering, University of Trento, Via Mesiano 77, 38123 Trento, Italy
This article presents a comprehensive analysis of the current state of the art of models and simulations adopted for hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) of organic waste and biomass. To our knowledge, up to now the state of the art of HTC modeling has been addressed only by a few authors and in a partial way. In this work, the three different subsystems to which modeling has been applied are critically investigated:
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the modeling of the process itself (i.e. reaction kinetics and statistical correlations), the reactor (heat transfer and computational models), and the overall plant. A glance at life cycle assessment analyses applied to HTC is also provided. Strengths and gaps of each modeling system are highlighted so to guide future research to further improvements.
Introduction The conversion of biomass into bio-based products and bioenergy is an important innovative aspect to pursue the circular economy principles, aimed to increase the amount of renewable sources and to reduce the consumption of raw material and energy [1]. The usage of second-gene
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