Pyrolysis of agricultural biomass waste materials aimed for energy utilization

Abstract

The use of renewable energy sources is becoming increasingly necessary, when achieving changes in addition to decrease the greenhouse gas emissions. Lately, biomass is one of the most common forms used as a source for renewable energy. Typical and abundant biomass residues have potential to produce energy in carbon neutral way, offering conversion to higher value products such as bio-char, bio-oils and bio-gas, when subjected to process of pyrolysis. Pyrolysis of biomass is an efficient thermo-chemical means of generating high-value energy and fuels. This paper focuses on the thermal behavior of several agricultural biomass materials, such as corn cob, vine rod and sunflower, under slow pyrolysis condition. The main idea is to quantify the energy potential of the selected biomass products. The composition of gas products was determined by gas chromatography (GC). The organic composites containing in the pyrolytic oils were analyzed by gas chromatography- mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The raw types of the examined biomass and the solid char products were analyzed by Fourier transform-infrared (FT-IR) spectrometry to define the functional groups. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA/DSC) measured the heat flow and the weight loss as a function of time and temperature in controlled atmosphere. The pyrolysis behavior, the loss of the organic after pyrolysis and the presence of different compounds were investigated in this work. The achieved results will provide important reference information for energy and fuel generation from agricultural biomass pyrolysis.