Thermal deoxygenation (TDO) is a promising reaction scheme for producing low oxygen bio-oil from biomass carbohydrate.The primary step in bio-oil production involves pyrolysis of alk. earth metal-neutralized biomass hydrolyzates at 723 K yielding bio-oil, chars, carbonates, and light gases.Reactor scaling from bench to floor-scale, however, reduced carbon yields from 80% to 48% of theor., resp.This paper details a two-stage process to intensify the TDO process, improving carbon yields to 79% of theor.The scheme involves a 523 K thermal pretreatment (stage I) to yield a polysalt and transition of a melt-phase.The resulting solid polysalt is reduced to powder to improve material handling and reaction rates during decomposition at 723 K (stage II).Resulting bio-oil yield is shown to improve from 0.082 to 0.16 kg-oil/kg-feed.A two-step reaction model is developed detailing the reaction rates and regimes which can guide continuous process design efforts.