Influence of Phenethyl Acetate and Naphthalene Addition before and after Pyrolysis on the Quantitative Analysis of Bio-Oil

Xuyan Song,Junpeng Yang,Qiang Gao,Min Wei,Xi Pan,Fan Wu,Hongyun Hu

doi:10.3390/en13236202

Xuyan Song, Junpeng Yang + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/en13236202

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Abstract

The condensation-collection and quantitative analysis of bio-oil limit its component investigation and utilization. In order to find a convenient method for the analysis of bio-oil, the present study conducted an attempt for bio-oil quantitative analysis with the addition of internal standards before pyrolysis. Based on their good thermal stability, phenethyl acetate and naphthalene were selected as standards in the study and experiments were carried out to compare the effects of two added modes (adding into the biowaste before pyrolysis or adding into bio-oil after pyrolysis) on the bio-oil analysis. The results showed that both phenethyl acetate and naphthalene were mainly volatilized under testing conditions, which could be transferred into the oil with the volatile matters during biowaste pyrolysis. Through the co-pyrolysis experiments of the internal standards with lignin and cellulose, almost no interactions were found between the internal standards and such components. Furthermore, adding these standards before pyrolysis hardly affected the properties of noncondensable gas and biochar from the used biowaste samples (tobacco and sawdust waste). Compared with the bio-oil analysis results via traditional methods by adding standards into the bio-oil after pyrolysis, the results regarding the component distribution characteristics of the bio-oil were similar using the proposed method through the addition of standards before pyrolysis. Considering adequate mixing of the added standards (before pyrolysis) in the generated bio-oil, the proposed method could partly help to avoid inaccurate analysis of bio-oil components caused by incomplete collection of the pyrolytic volatiles.

Highlights

In recent years, pyrolysis has attracted widespread attention in the thermochemical conversion process, which could convert biowaste into polymorphic products such as biochar, bio-oil, and noncondensable gas [1]
A gas chromatography mass spectrometer (GCMS) is a commonly used piece of analytical equipment, which can be combined with the pyrolysis device to ensure online analysis of bio-oil composition such as pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry and thermogravimetry-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (TG-GCMS) [5,6,7,8]
Questions are raised that the added internal standard may be decomposed during the pyrolysis process, making it difficult for subsequent quantitative and qualitative analysis of bio-oil components. In view of these points, the aim of this study was to carry out quantitative analysis of the full composition of bio-oil for better comprehension of the generation process of bio-oil by adopting the internal standards method (ISTD) before pyrolysis-analyzed production distribution

Summary

Introduction

Pyrolysis has attracted widespread attention in the thermochemical conversion process, which could convert biowaste into polymorphic products such as biochar, bio-oil, and noncondensable gas [1]. Compared with biochar and noncondensable gas, the components of liquid products are quite complex and much more difficult to analyze, which greatly restrict the understanding of the pyrolysis process for better utilization of bio-oil [2,3,4]. A gas chromatography mass spectrometer (GCMS) is a commonly used piece of analytical equipment, which can be combined with the pyrolysis device to ensure online analysis of bio-oil composition such as pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (py-GCMS) and thermogravimetry-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (TG-GCMS) [5,6,7,8].

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