Hydrothermal carbonization processes to increase the transportability of plant biomasses

Plant biomasses often have high water content and their energy and material density is too low, which significantly affects their high transport costs. Hydrothermal carbonization is a suitable method to increase the transportability of these biomasses. The produced biochar (HTC-char) is rich in carbon. Disadvantages of such carbonization process are the quality fluctuations of the biochars produced. This is also because there are to date no suitable measuring methods for the carbonization process. The paper presents a novel method, which will help to influence the carbonization process in the sense of qualitatively equivalent biochars by means of the achievable data therewith.