Room: Auditorium 1
Date: Tuesday, 10 June 2025
Time: 13:45 - 14:45 CEST
Session code BP.2
Recent trends on developing intermediate bioenergy carriers and sustainable biofuels
Valorization of Digestate from OFMSW through Hydrothermal Liquefaction
Short Introductive summary
Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a well-established technology that converts the organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) into biogas, though managing digestate byproduct remains challenging. This study examined the potential of hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) to further valorize digestate. A broad range of operating parameters -temperature (300-360 °C), residence time (10-60 min), and dry solid loading (5-30 wt.%) - was explored. Higher temperatures were found optimal for minimizing residual solids (down to 10% carbon yield), maximizing biocrude yield (up to 41% carbon yield), and enhancing its aromatic content. Increasing the dry solid loading resulted in a rise in residual solids (up to 27% carbon yield) at the expense of aqueous phase (AP) soluble compounds (minimum 4% carbon yield), mostly identified as amines. This study demonstrates that HTL can convert digestate into biocrude, capturing up to 48% of the feedstock's embedded energy in a more concentrated form (~31 MJ/kg), making it a suitable substitute for fossil-derived fuel oil.
Presenter
Edoardo TITO
Politecnico di Torino, Disat Dpt., ITALY
Presenter's biography
Edoardo holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering. Currently, he is working at Politecnico di Torino as a postdoc in the CREST group (Catalytic Reaction Engineering for Sustainable Technologies), focusing on hydrothermal liquefaction for the valorization of wastes (biomass and plastic).
Biographies and Short introductive summaries are supplied directly by presenters and are published here unedited
Co-authors:
D. Landi, Politecnico di Torino, Turin, ITALY
F. Demichelis, Politecnico di Torino, Turin, ITALY
G. Pipitone, Politecnico di Torino, Turin, ITALY
S. Bensaid, Politecnico di Torino, Turin, ITALY
R. Pirone, Politecnico di Torino, Turin, ITALY
Session reference: BP.2.2