RENEWABLE PHENOL PRODUCTION FROM OIL PALM SHELL WASTE BIOMASS BY MICROWAVE ASSISTED PYROLYSIS AT 2.54 GHZ
Last modified: 2017-09-22
Abstract
Fossil fuel energy supply and rising concerns over CO2 emission promoted great interest in renewable and clean fuel energy resources. Renewable energy resources, such as biomass and waste have been researched to power our modern society. Malaysia palm oil biomass sector generates enormous amount of palm waste biomass. The proper utilization of solid palm waste biomass provides a challenging environment and prospect to develop process to recover energy products. Among the solid palm waste biomass, Oil Palm Shell (OPS) waste biomass consists of higher volatile matter, which can be utilized to produce bio-oil. Among energy conversion technologies, Microwave (MW) assisted pyrolysis demonstrates the most promising technology to provide quick internal and volumetric heating of solids. The primary aim of this work was to investigate the effects of uniformly distributed Coconut Activated Carbon (CAC) solids over OPS biomass to observe uniform process heating and recover energy products. Three process parameters; CAC loading, MW power and N2 flow rate were studies. The results indicated that N2 flow rate controls the heat carrying capacity of MW pyrolysis reaction zone, MW power influenced process heating rate and CAC loading controls the final pyrolysis temperature. The finding of this study suggests that uniform process heating can be achieved by controlling the CAC loading and N2 flow rate. The variations in final temperature reached in biomass solids were also observed to control pyrolysis product yield. The highest bio-oil was obtained when the difference in final temperature were observed minimum. The bio-oil was enriched in phenol content. It was observed that the complete uniformity of pyrolysis process heating with carbon absorber is essential to improved phenol selectivity. The high H2 and syn gas in gas has the potential to use as fuel gas.