Catalytic hydrothermal liquefaction of rice straw in water/ethanol mixtures for high yields of monomeric phenols using reductive CuZnAl catalyst

Abstract This work investigated the yields of monomeric phenols in bio-oil derived from hydrothermal liquefaction of rice straw (RS) in water and ethanol mixtures using a reductive CuZnAl catalyst. Based on the results of an initial analysis, five monomeric phenolic compounds were selected for research due to their higher concentrations, namely phenol, 4-ethyl-phenol, 2-methoxy-phenol, 2-methoxy-4-ethyl-phenol and 2,6-dimethoxy-phenol. The optimized conditions for the production of monomeric phenols can be determined as: 2 g of CuZnAl catalyst, a ratio of 50% ethanol/50% water (v/v), a temperature of 300 °C and a reaction time of 30 min. Results suggested that the maximum yield of total monomeric phenols could reach as high as ~ 26.8% (based on the mass of RS lignin), and that the aqueous phase yielded 95.5% of the monomeric phenols due to the solubilization of the ethanol. The CuZnAl catalyst was recycled five times, and a slight loss in activity was observed and examined using a number of technologies, including inductively coupled plasma, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray detection. The low-cost nature of the CuZnAl catalyst makes it an ideal catalyst for the enhancement of monomeric phenols yields in water and ethanol mixtures.