Socio-economic assessment including feedstock supply and marketability concept of HTC/HTL-Products

Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) and hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) appear to be effective conversion techniques to produce energy dense biofuels and high value bio-chemicals. Both processes avoid the energy penalty of drying the biomass feedstock by processing the whole wet feedstock in hot compressed water. This work presents a socioeconomic assessment and a market analysis of different HTL and HTC-biorefineries and also evaluates the appropriateness of different feedstocks qualitatively in this respect. Throughout the analysis the value chain is assessed from cradle-to-gate. The results indicate that the production of bio-products from different feedstocks via hydrothermal conversion processes can have a significant positive social impact depending on the respective conversion process - feedstock combination.