Liquid discharge plasma for fast biomass liquefaction at mild conditions: The effects of homogeneous catalysts
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Liquid discharge plasma for fast biomass liquefaction at mild conditions: The effects of homogeneous catalysts Sen Wang1, Shiyun Liu1, Danhua Mei1, Rusen Zhou3, Congcong Jiang2, Xianhui Zhang2, Zhi Fang (✉)1, Kostya (Ken) Ostrikov3 1 College of Electrical Engineering and Control Science, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 211816, China 2 Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Plasma and Magnetic Resonance, Institute of Electromagnetics and Acoustics, Department of Electronic Science, College of Electronic Science and Technology, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China 3 School of Chemistry, Physics and Mechanical Engineering, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland 4000, Australia
© Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Non-thermal plasma exhibits unique advantages in biomass conversion for the sustainable production of higher-value energy carriers. Different homogeneous catalysts are usually required for plasma-enabled biomass liquefaction to achieve time-and energy-efficient conversions. However, the effects of such catalysts on the plasmaassisted liquefaction process and of the plasma on those catalysts have not been thoroughly studied. In this study, an electrical discharge plasma is employed to promote the direct liquefaction of sawdust in a mixture of polyethylene glycol 200 and glycerol. Three commonly used chemicals, sulfuric acid, nitric acid and sodium p-toluene sulfate, were selected as catalysts. The effects of the type of catalyst and concentration on the liquefaction yield were examined; further, the roles of the catalysts in the plasma liquefaction process have been discussed. The results showed that the liquefaction yield attains a value of 90% within 5 min when 1% sulfuric acid was employed as the catalyst. Compared with the other catalysts, sulfuric acid presents the highest efficiency for the liquefaction of sawdust. It was observed that hydrogen ions from the catalyst were primarily responsible for the significant thermal effects on the liquefaction system and the generation of large quantities of active species; these effects directly contributed to a higher efficacy of the plasma-enabled liquefaction process. Keywords discharge plasma, biomass liquefaction, catalyst, homogeneous catalysts
Received July 9, 2019; accepted August 24, 2019 E-mail: [email protected]
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Introduction
Biomass is a material formed by living organisms through photosynthesis, and is considered the fourth largest energy source on Earth. Among the various renewable energy sources, biomass is a promising energy source due to its ubiquity, richness, and renewability [1,2]. Biomass not only stores solar energy but also represents a renewable carbon source that can be converted into valuable energy carriers such as chemicals and fuels [3–5]. In biomass conversion, direct liquefaction technology has attracted considerable attention due to its promising advantages of moderate reaction conditions, high valueadded products and high conversion effici
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