Fast Pyrolysis of Cellulose, Hemicellulose, and Lignin: Effect of Operating Temperature on Bio-oil Yield and Composition and Insights into the Intrinsic Pyrolysis Chemistry

By K. Ansari, J. Arora, J. Chew, Paul J. Dauenhauer, S. H. Mushrif. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, 2019

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Fast pyrolysis of biomass produces bio-oil as a dominant product. However, the yield and composition of bio-oil are governed by numerous pyrolysis reactions which are difficult to understand because of the multiphase decomposition phenomena with convoluted chemistry and transport effects at millisecond time scales. In this work, thin-film pyrolysis experiments of biopolymers present in the biomass (i.e., cellulose (∼50 μm), hemicellulose (using xylan as a model biopolymer, ∼12 μm), and lignin (∼10 μm)) were performed over 200–550 °C, to investigate underlying thermal decomposition reactions, based on the product distribution obtained under reaction-controlled operating conditions. Experimental yields of non-condensable gases, bio-oil, and char at different operating temperatures and in the absence of transport limitations were obtained for each biopolymer. Cellulose- and xylan-derived bio-oil comprised of anhydrosugars, furans, and light oxygenates, in addition to pyrans in cellulosic bio-oil and phenols ...

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/591b34a349381e773d81e5ecab11acff728331aa