Experimental and Theoretical Study of Biomass Pyrolysis and Product Characterization

Abstract

Biomass is considered as an important energy resource all over the world and is converted newlineinto useful forms of energy, including generating electricity, fuelling vehicles, and providing newlineprocess heat for industrial facilities. It is the only renewable source of carbon that can be newlineconverted into convenient solid, liquid, and gaseous fuels. The choice of conversion process newlinedepends on the type and quantity of the biomass feedstock, the desired form of the energy, newlineend user requirements, environmental standards, economic conditions etc. The conversion of newlinebiomass to energy is performed using two main process technologies: thermo-chemical and newlinebiochemical/biological. Pyrolysis is one of the primary thermo-chemical treatment methods newlineto convert biomass into solid (char), liquid (bio-oil) and permanent gases. newlineIn the present work, a multi reaction kinetic model is proposed for the decomposition newlineof individual biomass constituents (i.e. cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin) with newlineincorporation of moisture release phenomena. The model takes into account, the independent newlineparallel reactions of nth order for the production of volatiles and char from each of the newlinebiomass constituents. The model is simulated using finite difference method to predict the newlinepyrolysis rate. The corresponding kinetic parameters of the developed model are estimated newlineby minimizing the sum of the square of the error between the model predicted values of newlineresidual weight fraction and the experimental data of thermo-gravimetry using nontraditional newlineoptimization technique i.e. logarithmic differential evolution (LDE). The newlineexperimental results of thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA) of Jatropha curcas de-oiled cakes newlineare used. A researcher has reported the kinetic parameters for kinetic model based on the newlineindividual biomass constituent decomposition. Moreover, their model predicts incorrect order newlineof biomass constituent degradation. However, in the present study, because of logarithmic newlineDE algorithm, the range of kinetic parameters are chosen in such a way that the order in newline