Modelling of a lignocellulosic biomass fractionation process in a lab-scale biorefinery with hot pressurized water

Abstract

This work deals with the modelling of a hydrothermal fractionation process of lignocellulosic biomass in a packed bed reactor. The aim is to obtain a realistic physico-chemical model, taking into account the effect of temperature, water flow and biomass properties. A novel reaction pathway based on two types of hemicellulose and cellulose is proposed in order to consider structural effects in degradation. Moreover, a population of 60 oligomer is defined for each biopolymer to include the molecular weight role. Therefore, hemicellulose and cellulose oligomers have an initial length of 200 and 10,000 monomers, respectively.