Effect of surfactant on hydrothermal carbonization of coconut shell.

The effect of surfactant on the hydrothermal carbonization performance and pseudo-lignin formation were investigated. Especially, the fuel properties and combustion characteristics of hydrochar and solid product were determined. Furthermore, the mechanism of surfactant acted in hydrothermal carbonization was also identified in this article. The results showed that surfactant improved the content of solid products, lignin, heavy bio-oil (HBO), H2 and CO. Moreover, sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate promoted the increase of the surface area of hydrochar from 4.93 to 41.43 m2/g. The mechanism showed surfactant formed water/oil film around the hydrochar to prevent HBO from leaving the pore or surface of hydrochar and promoted the condensation and polymerization of 5-hydroxymethylfurfura (5-HMF) with hydroxymethylfurfura (HMF) to form pseudo-lignin. The HBO and pseudo-lignin were beneficial for improving integrated combustion characteristic index (SN) during combustion. The article provides a new method to promote hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) for obtaining high value hydrochar as fuels.