Pyrolysis of forest biomass residues: comparative study of shimbal, cokad, cheed and cerus

Abstract

In this work, pyrolysis of shimbal (SH), cokad (CO), cheed (CH), and cerus (CE) biomass were carried out at temperatures 350, 400, 450, and 500°C using a fixed bed reactor. The products yields as well as the characterization of the products were compared. The maximum bio-oil yield was observed at 500°C for SH (52.0 wt.%), at 450°C for CO (55.0 wt.%), at 450 °C for CH (52.0 wt.%) and at 450°C for CE (50.0 wt.%) biomass. The highest bio-oil yield was obtained in the case of CO biomass (55.0 wt.%) at 450°C compared to SH, CE and CH forest biomass residues. The obtained products were characterized by using GC-MS, 1 H-NMR, FT-IR, TOC, XRD, SEM instruments. The bio-oil mainly composed of phenols, furans, ketones, carboxylic acids and their derivatives. The distribution of compound was dependent on the biomass composition and decomposition temperature during pyrolysis. The phenolic compounds majorly present in all the bio-oils were mainly due to lignin degradation. Aromatic proton percentage highest was obtained for CO bio-oil ca. 27% while lowest was found in CE bio-oil. The carbon conversions of all biomasses were increased as the temperature increases from 350 to 500°C. Moreover CO biomass showed highest carbon conversion (60.57%) at 500 °C. Bio-char analysis showed that the CO, and CE bio-chars were rich in aromatics structure compared to the SH and CH biochars