Liquid Hot Water Pretreatment of Lignocellulosic Biomass at Lab and Pilot Scale

Liquid hot water pretreatment is considered to be a promising method for increasing biomass digestibility due the moderate operational conditions without chemical additions. A necessary step towards scalability of this process performing pilot plant trials. Upscaling was evaluated with scaling factor 500, by using 50 mL in laboratory and 25 L batch reactor. Pretreatment times were varied from 30 240 min, temperatures used 180–188 °C, while applying similar heating profiles at both scales. The initial mass fraction poplar wood chips ranged 10% 16%. scale led analogous results. acetic acid analysis liquid solid fractions obtained after indicated that complete deacetylation can achieved.