Hydrothermal Liquefaction: The Most Promising Path to Sustainable B...

Hydrothermal liquefaction is basically pressure cooking, but instead of cooking the biomass in batches, one pot-full at a time, this new generation of HTL is based on flow production, where the biomass is injected into a 400 °C pre-heated reactor, "cooked" under high pressure for ~15 minutes and then quickly cooled down to 70°C.

At 400°C and high pressure the water is in a supercritical state, neither liquid nor gas, at which it easily decomposes the biomass. The process is environmentally friendly, since no harmful solvents are involved, and the energy efficiency is very high: The HTL process only consumes approximately 10-15% of the energy in the feedstock biomass,...

... the HTL process accepts all biomasses from modern society -- sewage sludge, manure, wood, compost and plant material along with waste from households, meat factories, dairy production and similar industries. [emphasis

mine]