Hydrothermal Carbonization of Biomass:Black Carbons with Refined Structure without Coaling.

Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) is a chemical process to turn carbohydrates (or waste biomass in general) into products which –depending on reaction conditions- resemble peat, brown coal or black, “industrial” carbons. HTC mimics the natural process of peat formation or coalification, but is highly accelerated to about 4 – 24 h reaction time by employing elevated temperatures between 180 – 210 °C and appropriate catalytic schemes. It not only works with a broad variety of “waste biomass”, it is also exothermic and therefore potentially independent of outer energy sources. In addition, it is “chemistry”, that is the nanostructure, the surface functionalities, and properties as biodegradability can be varied systematically.

In this talk, I will the process and the variety of structures of the resulting “biocoals”, plus that I will try to give some potential and scale of such type of technology.