Hydrothermal co-carbonization of rice straw and acid whey for enhanced hydrochar properties and nutrient recovery

Abstract

This study investigated rice straw hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) in water, optimizing operating conditions to enhance solid carbon content and nitrogen content in hydrochar. Additionally, we conducted hydrothermal co-carbonization (co-HTC) of rice straw and acid whey, achieving significant improvements in hydrochar properties. Co-HTC resulted in a 53.6% increase in HHVs, 20.0% higher yield, and a 42.7% rise in carbon content, accompanied by notable reductions in ash content. Nitrogen content increased by 26.0%, P content by 12.7 times, and K content by 27.6%. Analytical techniques revealed promising modifications, indicating potential applications of hydrochar in solid fuel or organic fertilizers, thus contributing to a circular bioeconomy in agricultural waste management.

Keywords

Rice straw / Acid whey / Co-hydrothermal carbonization / Hydrochar / Nutrient recovery

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Yuxiang Zhao: Writing - original draft, Visualization, Formal analysis, Data curation. Taotao Lu: Writing - review & editing, Formal analysis, Data curation. Guochen Xu: Writing - review & editing, Formal analysis, Data curation. Yilun Luo: Writing - review & editing, Formal analysis, Data curation. Xianlong Zhang: Writing - review & editing, Resources. Xueping Wu: Writing - review & editing, Resources. Xiaozhao Han: Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Resources. Jefferson W. Tester: Writing - review & editing, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization. Kui Wang: Writing - review & editing, Validation, Supervision, Project administration, Methodology, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the Seed Fund from the Young Huangshan Scholar Program (grant NO.13020-03712021051) and 2022 National College Students Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program (202210359044) at Hefei University of Technology. This work is also partially supported by the USDA grant 2019-69012-29905.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gerr.2024.100077.

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