School of Mechanical Engineering Semion Greiserman

School of Mechanical Engineering Seminar
Wednesday, October 24, 2018 at 14:00
Wolfson Building of Mechanical Engineering, Room 206

 Solar hydrothermal deconstruction of green macroalgae biomass for biofuel production

Semion Greiserman

MSc. Student of Dr. Alex Golberg and Prof. Avi Kribus

Biomass deconstruction to fermentable sugars is a major challenge for biorefineries. Traditional methods either employ acid or enzymatic hydrolysis, which are expensive and could damage the environment. Thermal hydrolysis is a green technology for biomass deconstruction, carbonization, liquefaction, and gasification.  However, subcritical hydrolysis generates a wide range of products from a heterogeneous raw material such as biomass. In this work, Taguchi orthogonal arrays was used for the experimental design and investigation of comparative significance of subcritical water process’s temperature, treatment time, solid load and salinity on glucose, xylose, rhamnose, fructose and galactose release from green macroalgae an emerging biorefinery feedstock. We also investigated the impact of the process parameters on the production of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (5-HMF), an important biofuel intermediate, which, however, is a major fermentation inhibitor. The optimum process parameters for maximum release of each monosaccharide and minimum production of 5-HMF was determined. The solid residue (hydrochar) heating value and chemical composition were also determined. Using the results from the experiments a simplified simulation of combined solar electricity generation and fuel (ethanol) production plant was analyzed and will be presented.