FLASH PYROLYSIS AND BIO-

OIL PRODUCTION

SHANMUGAPRIYA.G
BTG-12-031
PYROLYSIS

• Pyrolysis is the chemical decomposition of organic

materials by heating in the absence of oxygen or any
other reagents.
• Pyrolysis temperature, pressure, rate of temperature,
gas and solid phase retention time and material size
etc. are the main influence factors.
• Material suitable for pyrolysis processing include coal,
animal, and human waste, food scraps, paper, carboard
plastics, rubber and biomass.
• Biomass contains different components with different
thermal properties. Major components are cellulose,
hemicellulose, and lignin.
SLOW PYROLYSIS
• Conventional or slow pyrolysis is characterized by slow
biomass heating rate, low temperature and lengthy gas
and solids residence times.
• Depending upon the system, heating rates are about
0.1 to 2°c per second and prevailing temperature are
around 500°c.
• Gas residence time may be greater than five seconds
while that of the biomass can be range from minute to
take place.
• During conventional pyrolysis the biomass is slowly
devolatilized; hence, tar and char are the main
products.
• After the primary reaction have occurred, re-
polymerization or recombination are allowed to take
place.
• Conventional pyrolysis consists of the slow,
irreversible, thermal decomposition of the organic
components of biomass, most of which are lignocellulos
polymers.
FAST OR FLASH PYROLYSIS
• Flash pyrolysis takes place in less than two second with
temperatures between 300 to 550°c.
• Rapid thermal decomposition of organic compounds in the
absence of oxygen to produce liquids, char and gas.
• Char accumulates quickly in fast pyrolysis and must be
removed frequently.
• Dry feedstock:<10%
• Small particles:<3mm
• Short residence times:0.5-2s
• Moderate temperature:400-500°c
• Rapid quenching at the end of the process.
• Typical yields are Oil:60-70%, Char:12-15%,Gas:13-25%
CHARACTERISTICS OF BIO-OIL
• Crude pyrolysis liquid or bio-oil is similar to biomass in
elemental composition.
• The density of the liquid is about 1200kg/m³,which is
higher than but of fuel oil, and significantly higher
than of the original biomass.
• This means that the liquids has about 42% of the
energy content of fuel oil on a weight basis, but 61%
on a volatile basis.
• This has implications on the design and specification of
equipment such as pumps and atomizers in boilers and
engines.
• The viscosity of the oil varies from as low as 25cp up to
1000cp depending on water content, the amount of light
ends and the enter to which the oil gas aged.
• Bio oil is a liquid mixture of oxygenated compounds
various chemical functional groups, such as carbonyl,
carboxyl and phenolic.
• Its is comprised of the following constituents: 20-25%
water,25-30% water insoluble pyro lytic lignin,5-12
organic acids, 5-10% other oxygenated compounds.
• The higher heating value of the bio oil below 20MJ/kg.
FLASH PYROLYSIS ADVANTAGES
• Operates at atmospheric pressure and moderate
temperature(450°) yields of bio oil can exceed 70 wt %.
• The bio- oil can be used for direct applications in the
burners replacing the furnace oil for steam production or
power production

DISADVANTAGES

• High oxygen and water content of pyrolysis liquids makes

them inferior to conventional hydrocarbon fuels. Phase
separation and polymerization of the liquids and corrosion
of containers make storage of these liquids difficult.
Fast Pyrolysis Reactor Types

Fast pyrolysis can be further categorized as ,

• Ablative fast pyrolysis,
• cyclonic fast pyrolysis,
• Rotating cone fast pyrolysis.
Preparation of bio-oil
• Biomass can be converted to bio-oil by the way of fast
pyrolysis, liquefaction and gasification process and it
can also be further obtained high quality products with
the help of upgrading and separation processes.
• The products properties are different through these
approaches, which attributes to the differences in
technology as well as equipment.
Raw material
• Biomass raw materials are marked by their tremendous
diversity, which include frost products wastes, agricultural
residues, organic fractions of municipal solid wastes, paper,
cardboard, plastic, food waste and other waste.
• Now a days, a lot of materials have been used in the
scientific research as raw material such as wood leaf, wood
industry residues rice husks, saw dust, corn stalks and so
on.
• In the stage of raw material preparation, drying is usually
essential because of the existence of water in the
feedstock, which will transfer into liquid product finally.
• High content of water will reduce the heat value of bio oil
and after is storage stability.
• In general, we can make use of by-products gas to dry the
feeds stock in order to reduce energy consumption.
Fluidized bed fast pyrolysis
• The reactor configuration mainly contain a hopper,
two screw feeder, an electric heater, a fluidized bed
reactor, to cyclone, a condenser, and an oil pump, a well
as some thermocouple and pressure meters.
• In the experiment process, the raw material are fed
to the hopper at a certain rate and the hot vapor
produced will be quickly cooled into liquid product in
the condenser.
• As a kind of most popular and idea configuration ,e
have reason to believe the fluid bed will achieve
greater developments in performance and cot
reduction in the near future.
Temperature of reaction
• Fast pyrolysis is a high temperature processes, thus
temperature has tremendous effect to the yield of liquid.
The correlation between them below for typical products
from fast pyrolysis of wood.
• In the lower temperature , the liquid yield is low due to the
less sufficient pyrolysis reaction, which will produce high
content of char at the same time.
• The excessive temperature will also bed to decreased liquid
yield resulting from the increase of gas product.
• In order to achieve high liquid yield. The pyrolysis reaction
temperature is better to be controlled around 500°c in the
vapor phase for most forms of woody biomass.
• Different
 Vapor residence time
• Vapor residence time is also important to the liquid
yield of pyrolysis reaction. Very short residence times
will lead to the incomplete de polymerization of the
lignin while prolonged residence times can cause
further cracking of the primary products.
• Too long or short residence time will reduce the
organic yield. So it is necessary to select a suitable
residence time.
Liquefaction

• In liquefaction process, macromolecular substance are

decomposed into small molecule in the condition of
heating and the presence of catalyst.
• Pyrolysis and liquefaction are both thermo-chemical
conversion, but the operating conditions are different .
Moreover ,as two kinds of different transformation
method, there are also lot of differences between the
liquefaction and pyrolysis mechanism of biomass.
Direct liquefaction

• Liquefaction can be divided in to categories, direct

liquefaction and indirect liquefaction.
• Direct liquefaction refers to rapid pyrolysis to
produce liquids tars and oils and for condensable
organic vapors, while indirect liquefaction is a kind of
condensing process of gas to produce liquid products in
the presence of catalysts.
• In the process of preparation and characterization of
bio oil from biomass occurred Such a cracking,
hydrogenation, hydrolysis and dehydration and so on.
SUB/ SUPER CRITICAL
LIQUEFACTION
• Supercritical liquefaction is thermo-chemical process for
the conversion of biomass to bio-oil in the presence of
supercritical solvents as reaction medium.
• At present water as reaction medium in attracting in the
aspect of various biomass conversion due to a series of
advantages compared with other organic solvents. On one
hand, water is an economic and environmental friendly
solvent because it will eliminate the costly pretreatment
of drying process of wet raw materials and not produce
pollution.
• On other hand, water processes suitable critical
temperature(374°c) and critical pressure(22Mpa) and it
has a strong solubility for organic compound derived from
biomass in the Supercritical condition.
THANK YOU