Modeling and Kinetic Study of Degradative Solvent Extraction of Biomass Wastes

The degradative solvent extraction (DSE) has been found to be an effective method to convert and upgrade biomass wastes into high-quality extracts with various applications. However, the reaction pathways and kinetics of this DSE process are still not clear and need to be clarified. Hence, in this study, the biomass was treated in 1-methylnaphthalene at various conditions (300–350 °C and 0–90 min) by the DSE method and separated into five products: residue (unreacted biomass), two extracts (deposit and soluble), liquid, and gas. A lumped reaction model was proposed to simulate this biomass DSE process. The kinetic parameters were estimated by the least squares fit based on the experimental data and the model, which was optimized by the MATLAB optimization program. The results showed that the proposed model was valid and well-capable of describing the biomass DSE process. It can be concluded that different conversion pathways existed at 300 and 350 °C. At 300 °C, the dominant reactions were the conversion ...