One of the main drawbacks of using
biomass as pyrolysis feedstock
consists of the huge variability of the different biomass resources
which undermines the viability of downstream processes. Inherent inorganic
elements greatly contribute to enhance the compositional variability
issues due to their catalytic effect (especially alkali and alkaline
earth metals (AAEMs)) and the technical problems arising due to their
presence. Due to the different pretreatments adopted in the experimental
investigations as well as the different reactor configurations and
experimental conditions, some mechanisms involving interactions between
these elements and the biomass organic fraction during pyrolysis are
still debated. This is the reason why predicting the results of these
interactions by adapting the existing kinetic models of pyrolysis
is still challenging. In this work, the most prominent experimental
works of the last 10 years dealing with the catalytic effects of biomass
inherent metals on the pyrolysis process are reviewed. Reaction pathways,
products distributions and characteristics, and impacts on the products
utilization are discussed with a focus on AAEMs and on potential toxic
metallic elements in hyperaccumulator plants. The literature findings
are discussed in relation to the applied laboratory procedures controlling
the concentration of inherent inorganic elements, their capability
of preserving the chemical integrity of the main organic components,
and the ability of resembling the inherent inorganic elements in the
raw biomass. The goal is to reveal possible experimental inconsistencies
and to provide a clear scheme of the reaction pathways altered by
the presence of inherent inorganics. This analysis paves the way for
the examination of the proposed modifications of the existing models
aiming at capturing the effect of inorganics on pyrolysis kinetics.
Finally, the most relevant shortcomings and bottlenecks in existing
experimental and modeling approaches are analyzed and directions for
further studies are suggested.