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Biomass Pyrolysis

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Renewable Energy Systems

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Definition and Importance of the Subject

Pyrolysis is the oxygen free thermochemical conversion of materials. Pyrolysis turns a feed like biomass into three major products: gases, liquids, and char. The char contains the ash and is often called biochar . Pyrolysis is able to condition or liquefy biomass. For most of the processes and feedstock materials the liquid contains of two phases, a water rich and organic rich fraction.

By means of pyrolysis, several types of biomass feedstock can be made suitable for gasification or combustion. A solid feed is turned into gas and liquid, or a slurry, which is a mixture of liquid and char. For combustion purpose, the char is very suitable which is in most cases bridle and possible to use in a coal-fired power plant or a biomass power plant.

Introduction

Pyrolysis in general is the thermochemical conversion of feed material under the absence of oxygen. Pyrolysis reactors exist in various designs and for various pyrolysis conditions as fast,...

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Abbreviations

Fast pyrolysis:

Heat up of the sample within 1–2 s and the condensation of products within seconds.

Intermediate pyrolysis:

Heat up of the sample within minutes (1–10) and the rapid condensation of products within seconds.

Pyrolysis:

Pyrolysis is the thermochemical conversion of feed material under the absence of oxygen; usually products of pyrolysis are char, liquid, and gas.

Slow pyrolysis:

Heat up of the sample within hours or days.

Thermochemical conversion:

Treatment of material at elevated temperature and which is causing chemical conversion reactions like cracking, radical reactions, decarboxylation, and so on.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. European Bioenergy Research Insitute – EBRI, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham, UK

    Andreas Hornung

Authors
  1. Andreas Hornung
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andreas Hornung .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. German Biomass Research Centre, Leipzig, Germany

    Martin Kaltschmitt

  2. Institute of Environmental Technology and Energy Economics, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany

    Martin Kaltschmitt

  3. Earth Engineering Center, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Nickolas J. Themelis

  4. Ormat Technologies, Inc., Reno, NV, USA

    Lucien Y. Bronicki

  5. Royal Institute of Technology, Electric Power Systems, Stockholm, Sweden

    Lennart Söder

  6. Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, School of Ocean And Earth Science And Technology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA

    Luis A. Vega

Annex 1: Example: Haloclean Pyrolysis and Gasification of Straw

Annex 1: Example: Haloclean Pyrolysis and Gasification of Straw

Pyrolysis of straw is still an issue for most of the existing pyrolysis units in the field of fast and slow pyrolysis. The Haloclean process has already been tested in 2005 in a campaign of 5 weeks for the conversion of 15 t of straw into liquids, gas, and char. Later on, the liquids and the char have been successfully converted to synthesize gas in a commercial-scale gasifier [35].

The Haloclean-reactor has been used in a temperature range of 320–500°C. Typical for this reactor are short residence times (1–10 min for the solid residues) for pyrolysis of chaffed straw, finely ground straw, and straw pellets with variable residence times of about 0.3–60 s for the gas phase and gaseous pyrolysis liquids. The Haloclean-reactor consists of a rotary kiln equipped with an internally nitrogen purged and heated screw. During the pyrolysis, metal spheres are transported through the rotary kiln for a better heat transfer.

A very important result of this test is that the shape and size of the feed can be variable without changing the performance of the reactor.

Figure 14 shows that at low temperature (325°C), the coke yield is much higher than the yield of oil (73:18), while at higher temperature (375°C), the ratio coke/oil is 38:37 (1:1). At a pyrolysis temperature of 385°C, the ratio coke/oil is at an optimum of 36:41.6. Therefore, it is possible to obtain with the Haloclean pyrolysis up to 5% more oil than coke.

Biomass Pyrolysis. Figure 14
figure 2257figure 2257

Yield of pyrolysis products – powdered straw

Full size image

Generally one can see that the amount of pyrolysis gas is increasing with increasing temperature; at 400°C, the amount of pyrolysis oil is decreasing due to the fact that more and more pyrolysis oil is degraded to pyrolysis gas .

The dimensions of the Haloclean-pyrolysis pilot plant are shown in Fig. 15. Below the dimensions of such a plant are given exemplarily.

  • Diameter of the pipe: do = 273 mm, di = 253 mm

  • Length of the oven: 2,200 mm

  • Total length: 4,500 mm

  • Diameter of the screw: 116 mm

  • Draft of the screw: 150 mm

  • Heat transfer medium: Spheres m = 70 g, d = 25 mm

Biomass Pyrolysis. Figure 15
figure 2258figure 2258

Scheme of the Haloclean-pyrolysis pilot plant

Full size image

Below, results of the pyrolysis of straw are shown as an example.

  • Pyrolysis Char : Ho = 26 MJ/kg; Ho is the upper heating value

    • C: 63%, H: 3.7%, N: 1.1%, O: 12.9%

    • Ash content of the Char: SiO2: 59%, Al2O3: 0.3%, Fe2O3: 0.7%, CaO: 7.3%, MgO: 2.1%, P2O5: 3.4%, Na2O: 0.4%, K2O: 23.8%, SO3: 3.1%

  • Pyrolysis Liquid : Ho = 7 MJ/kg (approx. 50% water phase) and 18% highly phenolic phase (Ho = 24 MJ/kg)

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Hornung, A. (2013). Biomass Pyrolysis . In: Kaltschmitt, M., Themelis, N.J., Bronicki, L.Y., Söder, L., Vega, L.A. (eds) Renewable Energy Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5820-3_258

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