Syngas production at low temperature via the combination of hydrothermal pretreatment and activated carbon catalyst along with value-added utilization of tar and bio-char

Syngas was acquired at 500 °C by the combination of hydrothermal pretreatment (HP) and activated carbon catalyst (ACC) in this work. It's found that HP process removed AAEMs and hemicellulose from biomass, which significantly elevated volatiles release and made sugars and mono-phenols as main components in volatiles. Through the reforming via ACC, oxygen-containing groups in sugars and mono-phenols were deprived and contributed to syngas formation. Top-quality syngas was obtained at HRH150 with CO of 66.68% and syngas purity of 71.17%. More importantly, owing to low enough reforming temperature, phenol was the only dominant organic of tar in this study. In addition, HP process endowed bio-chars with elevated porosity. After NaOH activation, activated bio-char (AC) with highest meso-pore ratio was also obtained at AC-HRH150 (BET of 2366.8 m2/g). All in all, results above provided a brand-new angle for further poly-generation of biomass resources.