Analysis of Carbonization Behavior of Hydrochar Produced by Hydrothermal Carbonization of Lignin and Development of a Prediction Model for Carbonization Degree Using Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

In this paper, we investigated the carbonization characteristics of lignin hydrochar prepared by hydrothermal carbonization and established a model for predicting the carbonization degree using near-infrared spectroscopy and partial least squares regression. The carbon content of the hydrothermally carbonized lignin at the temperature of 200 ℃ was higher by approximately 3 wt% than that of the untreated sample, and the carbon content tended to gradually increase as the heating time increased. Hydrothermal carbonization made lignin more carbon-intensive and more homogeneous by eliminating the microparticles. The discriminant and predictive models using near-infrared spectroscopy and partial least squares regression approppriately determined whether hydrothermal carbonization has been applied and predicted the carbon content of hydrothermal carbonized lignin with high accuracy. In this study, we confirmed that we can quickly and nondestructively predict the carbonization characteristics of lignin hydrochar manufactured by hydrothermal carbonization using a partial least squares regression model combined with near-infrared spectroscopy.