Hydrothermal Carbonization (HTC) of Sugarcane Stranded: Effect of Operation Condition to Hydrochar Production

Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) process is a pretreatment process to convert feedstock into coal-liked material, called hydrochar. This work, HTC of sugarcane stranded was investigated at (1) different reaction temperatures (180oC, 220oC and 250oC) for 1 h retention time and (2) different retention times (0.5, 1 and 2 h) at reaction temperature of 220oC to study the effect of operation condition to product yield. The results show that when temperature increasing, hydrochar yield and hydrogen and oxygen contents tend to decrease due to hydrolysis of hemicellulose and cellulose. In contrast, increasing of reaction temperature, carbon content of hydrochar tends to increase. For the effect of retention time to char product, hydrochar yield tends to decrease, when retention time increases; however, at retention time longer than 1 h, hydrochar yields are almost unchanged. These results show that HTC process can be used to improve quality of solid fuel compared to raw biomass, however, operation conditions of HTC process are very significant to hydrochar production.