Fast Pyrolysis of Residues from Paper Mill Industry to Bio-oil and Value Chemicals: Optimization Studies

AbstractBiomass is a renewable energy and had been recognized as a promising feedstock for producing bio-fuels. In this work, pyrolysis of black wattle residues was investigated with the aim to study the product distribution and their chemical composition and predicting the optimal condition for maximized bio-oil especially aromatics content by using a two level factorial design of experiment. The pyrolysis were performed at temperature of 380 – 580 oC, Under screw feeder carried the biomass residues and weight of dolomite as catalyst of 1-5 wt% inside pyrolyzer with nitrogen gases flow rate of 20 to 80 cm3/min The detention time was controlled by reactor screw feeder at feeding rate of 120 to 240rpm. Based on the analysis from a design-expert program to determine the appropriated condition of experiment was 515.18 oC, 120.01rpm of feed rate and 20.00 cm3/min of nitrogen flow rate using 5.00wt% of dolomite catalyst. The elemental and physicochemistry analysis of bio-oil were determined, the chemical composition also investigated using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and 1H NMR. The composition of bio-oil mainly oxygenated compound with high molecular weight and phenol. The results show that the biomass residual can be considered as a potential alternative fuels and relevant to valuable chemical feedstock