International Journal of Environmental Science and Development

Abstract—The use of agricultural biomass residues as an alternative of fossil derivatives have been extensively investigated in the last years due to environmental concerns. In this context, the liquefaction appears as an alternative to use these renewable sources to produce green materials. The present work aims to synthesize polyols from the cassava peels (CP), lemon bagasse (LB) and rice husk (RH) in order to obtain biopolyols suitable to produce polyurethane foams and add value to these residues. Besides the production of the green foams, this work has also the objective to evaluate how composition of the biomass (e.g.: solid, lignin and holocellulose content) can be related to the process yield and the characteristics of the biopolyol (e.g: hydroxyl number). The polyols were synthesized from the biomass liquefaction, using crude glycerol as solvent (a by-product of biodiesel industry) and sulfuric acid as catalyst. The liquefaction was performed using an autoclave, operated at 125 °C and 1.84 atm. Liquefaction yield varied from 38 to 91 %, according to biomass and process parameters used. It was observed that CP, which has the higher volatile solids content and the lower lignin plus holocellulose content, had the higher liquefaction yield. Polyol’s hydroxyl number from RH had the lowest values and lower variation, according to process parameters. Liquefaction yield and hydroxyl number from LB presented great response to process parameters used.

Index Terms—Valorization, polyol, lignocellulosic, lignin.

Leite B. S. F., Leite S. A. F., and Bastos F. S. are with the Institute of Science and Technology, Universidade Federal de Viçosa (UFV- Campus Florestal), Florestal, MG, Brazil (e-mail: brennoleite@ufv.br, sibeleaugusta@ufv.br, fernando.bastos@ufv.br).
Ferreira D. J. O. and Lins V. F. C. are with Chemical Engineering at the Department of Chemical Engineering of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil (e-mail: chaada@gmail.com, vlins@deq.ufmg.br).
Castro B. T. is with Chemistry Universidade Federal de Viçosa (UFVCampus Florestal), Florestal, MG, Brazil (e-mail: bruno.tassicastro@gmail.com).

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Cite: Leite B. S., Ferreira D. J. O., Leite S. A. F., Bastos F. S., Lins V. F. C., and Castro B. T., "Investigation of Agricultural Biomass Residues in Liquefaction Process," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development vol. 10, no. 11, pp. 373-379, 2019.

Copyright © 2019 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).