Publication | Peer reviewed papers | Potentiale, Bioenergiesysteme, Logistik
Renewable hydrogen production from hydrothermal liquefaction wastewater via aqueous phase reforming: From laboratory to pilot scale
Published 17. Februar 2025
Citation: Arlt S, Zoppi G, Hochgerner S, Weber G, Pipitone G, Pirone R, Bensaid S. Renewable hydrogen production from hydrothermal liquefaction wastewater via aqueous phase reforming: From laboratory to pilot scale.2025.103:213*223.
Abstract
Aqueous phase reforming (APR) has been proposed during the last years as a promising technology to produce renewable hydrogen from carbon-laden water fractions. However, only small-scale set-ups have been used for the investigation so far, leading to a gap in technological knowledge. In this work, a multi-component mixture representative of wastewater from lignin-rich hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) was evaluated at two different scales: a lab-scale facility (30–60 mL/h) to optimize the reaction conditions and, for the first time, a pilot-scale unit (max. 44 L/h) to validate the results. On lab scale, the influence of reaction temperature, weight hourly space velocity and feed concentration on the process performance was investigated using a response surface methodology (RSM) approach via Box-Behnken design. It was found out that temperature was the most important variable to model the reactants conversion, carbon conversion to gas and hydrogen yield, with a significant agreement between the experimental and predicted values in the design space. At pilot scale, the influence of temperature and pressure as well as catalyst stability were investigated. Furthermore, stable operation was demonstrated in a continuous 100 h experiment. A maximum hydrogen yield of 58% and carbon conversion to gas of 54% were achieved at 547 K, 10 g/L organics concentration and 60 mL/gcat‧h. Overall, this study allowed to increase the understanding of APR at the highest technology readiness level available so far, paving the way towards its implementation on industrial scale.