New insights into cellulose fast pyrolysis kinetics using advanced analytical techniques

A novel micropyrolyzer setup has been designed to study the intrinsic kinetics of biomass fast pyrolysis, using cellulose as a model compound. A detailed product distribution has been obtained by coupling GC × GC-FID/TOF-MS to the micropyrolyzer reactor of which a large number were never reported earlier in the literature. A customized GC, also coupled to the reactor, has enabled the analysis of water and permanent gases simultaneously. Glucose pyrolysis yielded about 8 wt.% of levoglucosan, which is in agreement with the literature. However, the yields of products such as methylglyoxal and glycolaldehyde were found to increase due to advanced analytics. About 70 product species could be identified and quantified using this novel setup. The effect of two different cellulose particle sizes gave substantial differences in the measured bio-oil. Cellulose with 15 µm particle sizes resulted in nearly 3 times lower levoglucosan yields than that of 50 µm particles. Simultaneously, a significant increase in the yields of furan species was also observed. Further investigation into this could improve the current mechanistic understanding of cellulose fast pyrolysis.

Jaar van publicatie:2019

Toegankelijkheid:Open