The transport sector has risen as one of the largest consumers of fossil fuels, accounting for 40% of the final energy consumption of which 80% relates to road transport. Subsequently, this results in an annual release of 7 billion tons of greenhouse gases (GHG), pre-eminently carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx), contributing to potentially catastrophic changes in climate, environment, biodiversity, and public health. To achieve a cleaner and healthier environment, there is a strong focus on the development of sustainable low-carbon, high-yield, and cost-competitive liquid bio-crude oil as an alternative to conventional fossil crude oil. To meet these challenges, the EU has established new strategic policies supporting the replacement of the linear economic models of today with circular and regenerative ones. Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) is an advanced and highly competitive thermo-chemical route considered for producing liquid transportation fuels from non-edible, low-value, and readily available biomass sources
CO-HTL4BIO-OIL project is addressing a number of key contributions, providing pioneering insights into looking for more value management methods of carbonated food waste streams locally sourced in Europe that have the added potential of producing competitive fuel for petroleum oil and reducing the environmental cost associated with their disposal. Co-hydrothermal liquefaction (CO-HTL) of rye straw, shellfish, and beef tallow over HTL of individual feedstock is an emerging study because it reduces the logistic costs for feedstock collection and transportation whilst at the same time improving slurry feedstock processability for continuous process, increases the bio-oil yield and quality by tailoring the biochemical composition of raw materials mixtures. Scaling of the catalytic CO-HTL process for continuous operations and employing novel predictive quantitative models based on biomass composition and HTL process variables serve as a great perspective for biorefinery integration. These outputs not only will aid energy planners, policy-makers, engineers, and researchers in the field in exploring the future of the transport sector in a holistic manner.
For this purpose, the listed specific objectives were pursued to explore the potential of rarely studied food waste as a co-organic matter to make high-quality bio-crude oil into transportation fuel that meets current fuel property standards:
Objective 1: To conduct a full biochemistry characterization and determine the heteroatom contents; especially nitrogen, and phosphorus; contained in the selected food wastes prior to co-liquefaction.
Objective 2: To develop statistical models combining biomass composition and HTL conditions which help to deeply gain insights into the co-liquefaction mechanism, and predict the yield and quality of HTL multiphase products.
Objective 3: To upgrade the high-quality HTL bio-crude oil into drop-in fuels from animal wastes (crab waste and beef tallow) and perform techno-economic assessments.
Objective 4: To recover nutrients and organics recovery from post-hydrothermal liquefaction wastewater.
