(446g) Agricultural Residue As a Resource for Catalyst Preparation for Bio-Oil Production

Abstract

The demand for energy and its resources is increasing day by day due to the rapid outgrowth of population and urbanization. Biomass is one of the main available renewable energy sources with increasing potential in the energy market worldwide. Its main advantage is that biomass can be converted (besides heat and power) to liquid, solid and gaseous fuels. It can also be transformed into a source of higher value products for the chemical industry. Residual biomass, such as agricultural residues, can today contribute to the targets of green energy production and sustainable development in rural areas. Pyrolysis of biomass has been investigated using different elements and supported catalyst under operation condition of 500 oC with heating rate 40o/min and 100 mL/min N2 flow rate in a fixed bed reactor for bio-fuel production.i-ii

Catalysis seems to play a significant role towards the efficient upgrading of the residual biomass. The development of efficient catalysts, able to decompose in situ and reform the pyrolysis products is an important advancement in biomass thermochemical research. The goal of these studies is to use agricultural residues as catalyst support for new advanced catalysts for catalytic pyrolysis of biomass. The prepared catalysts were characterized using N2 adsorption method to determine its surface area. Morphology and surface elemental composition of catalyst were performed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) equipped with an energy dispersive x-ray (EDX) analysis. X-ray diffraction (XRD) has been applied for crystallinity detection. The performance of catalyst on biomass pyrolysis was studied using thermogravemetric analyzer (TGA). It showed that oxides of of Fe and Zr on rice straw support had higher catalytic activity compared to other Fe and Ni supported catalyst.

Reference

¹J. Sheng, D. Ji, F. Yu, L. Cui, Q. Zeng, N. Ai, J. Ji, IERI Procedia, 2014, 8, 30-34.

²S.-S. Kim, F.A.Agblevor, Biosource Technilogy, 2014, 169, 367-373.