Thermochemical processes for biofuels production from biomass

Abstract

The contribution of biomass to the world's energy supply is presently estimated to be around 10% to 14%. The conversion of biomass to biofuels can be achieved primarily via biochemical and thermochemical processes. Recently, the use of thermochemical processes as pyrolysis and gasification has received great attention. The biomass composition and form of process conduction can affect greatly the efficiency of conversion for both gasification and pyrolysis. This review compiles recent thermochemical studies using several kinds of biomass to obtain biofuels and, additionally, it presents a brief description of main gasification and pyrolysis processes employed. Publications in Patent database also were reported and compiled.

Biochar: Pyrogenic Carbon for Agricultural Use - A Critical Review

“…Pyrolysis can be described as the direct thermal decomposition of an organic matrix that yields solid, liquid and gas products (Canabarro et al, 2013). Yield of products resulting from biomass pyrolysis can be maximized as follows: charcoal (a low-temperature, low heating rate process, long residence times), liquid products (low or moderate temperature, high heating rate, short gas residence time), and fuel gas (a high-temperature, low heating rate process, long gas residence time) (Bridgwater, 2012;Canabarro et al, 2013).…”

“…Yield of products resulting from biomass pyrolysis can be maximized as follows: charcoal (a low-temperature, low heating rate process, long residence times), liquid products (low or moderate temperature, high heating rate, short gas residence time), and fuel gas (a high-temperature, low heating rate process, long gas residence time) (Bridgwater, 2012;Canabarro et al, 2013). This facility in combining temperature and residence times makes pyrolysis a very versatile process, which allowed the development of many different technological possibilities.…”

“…This process is used mainly to produce bio-oil. Temperatures ranging from 400 to 950 °C promote rapid depolymerization and feedstock cracking, resulting in bio-oil with viscosity comparable to diesel oil (Canabarro et al, 2013). Examples of this process are flash hydro-pyrolysis, which involves hydrogen atmosphere at pressures up to 20 MPa and vacuum flash pyrolysis, which occurs under negative pressure to remove condensable products from the hot reaction zone (Canabarro et al, 2013).…”

Biocatalysis for biomass valorization

“…Glycerol is the common by-product in all conversions. So, these renewable resources can also be tapped for all the excellent products which have been obtained from glycerol so far [18][19][20] and that list is growing [21].…”

Mass spectrometry characterization of evolved gases from catalytic pyrolysis of cassava starch residues

“…Pyrolysis is the main method to obtain liquid fuels from biomass (bio-oil); however, these fuels cannot be used directly because of issues related to its rheology, moisture, heating value, and stability. Therefore, the physicochemical properties of bio-oil must be improved by several technologies, among which, catalytic pyrolysis is a promising one [3]. Catalytic pyrolysis for bio-oil production potentially could eliminate condensation and re-evaporation processes in actual bio-oil production schemes.…”