Biomass Pyrolysis in a Fluidized Bed Reactor. Part 1:  Literature Review and Model Simulations

Abstract

The literature on biomass pyrolysis regarding kinetics, models (single particle and reactor), and experimental results is reviewed from an engineering point of view. Predictions of existing single particle models derived from a detailed description of the transport phenomena and literature data on measured intrinsic chemical kinetics are presented. The main conclusions from the literature and modeling studies can be summarized as follows: (1) the available knowledge on kinetics and transport phenomena has not been integrated properly for reactor design, (2) complex two-dimensional single particle models do not provide more accurate, or otherwise better, information for engineering calculations than do the simple one-dimensional models, and (3) single particle models predict (for all available kinetics) that the influence of the particle size on the liquid yield is limited. This effect can be explained with the effective pyrolysis temperature, a parameter that represents the particle's average temperature at which the conversion is essentially taking place.

A Comparison of the Pyrolysis of Olive Kernel Biomass in Fluidised and Fixed Bed Conditions

“…This is normally undertaken via the measurement of variation of mass loss with time of a sample held in the TGA cell at a preset heating rate [4][5][6][7]. Other work has involved the development of reactors at a larger scales to determine the kinetics of biomass pyrolysis with larger sample sizes, determining conversion through the analysis of the yield of gas [8][9][10][11].…”

Progress of conversion in a shrinking wet cylindrical wood particle pyrolyzing in a hot fluidized bed

“…Therefore, approximations on the number of dimensions in the model cannot be made unless a particular dimension is extremely small compared to the others. Table 1 shows the details of pyrolysis models, [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11], in fluidized beds. It can be seen that all other models except that of Kersten et al [10], are 1D models.…”

Ceria promoted deoxygenation and denitrogenation of Thalassiosira weissflogii and its model compounds by catalytic in-situ pyrolysis

“…High char yields are probably due to the slow heating rate used (100°C/min) during pyrolysis (Kersten et al, 2005). The total volatiles and the gas yields were increased generally, while the bio-char yields decreased in all experiments.…”