Chemical composition of ten biomass feedstocks and their suitability for conversion by fast pyrolysis

Within the Bio4Products project, CAPAX is responsible for the collection and preparation of various primary and secondary feedstocks for the production of large quantities of pyrolysis oil to enable fractionation on pilot scale. As part of this activity a range of biomass feedstocks were investigated to determine their chemical composition. Besides the dry matter and ash content, the presence of minerals like potassium, calcium, chlorine and organic compounds (nitrogen) were determined. Furthermore, the ash melting behaviour was evaluated to get information about the slagging tendency during thermo-chemical conversion. The effect of the biomass resource in relation to its performance in the complete processing chain was also evaluated. This report contains additional analytical data concerning the chemical fuel properties of the selected biomass feedstocks together with summarised data from earlier reports. With this combined data the effect of the biomass feedstock in relation to its performance in fast pyrolysis and following FPBO fractionation is evaluated. Subsequently a (final) feedstock selection was performed applying 10 performance parameters to indicate the two most suitable feedstocks for pilot (fast pyrolysis) processing. Ultimately, sunflower (seed husks) and poplar slabs were found to be the best scoring feedstocks