Abstract
Intermediate pyrolysis of red algal biomass was performed in a fixed-bed tubular reactor. To study the parametric effect on product distribution, the experiments were carried out at different temperatures ranging from 400 to 600 °C and different heating rates of 15, 30 and 50 °C/min. The objective of this study is to understand the effect of pyrolysis temperature and heating rate on the yields and compositions of the pyrolysis products of red algal biomass. The bio-oil, biochar and biogas yields ranged between 33 and 45 wt%, 29 and 42 wt%, and 18 and 35 wt%, respectively, at different pyrolysis conditions. The highest bio-oil yield (45.02%) was obtained at 450 °C temperature at a heating rate of 50 °C/min. The bio-oil was characterized by proximate and ultimate analysis, FTIR, 1H-NMR and GC–MS analysis whereas the biochar was characterized by proximate, ultimate, FTIR, SEM and BET. Higher heating value and density of the bio-oil were 20.11 MJ/kg, , respectively. The bio-oil with relatively high fuel potential can be obtained from the pyrolysis of the red algal biomass. The characterization of bio-oil showed a high percentage of aliphatic functional groups and presence of phenolic, ketone- and nitrogen-containing groups. The characterization results showed that the bio-oil obtained from red algal biomass can be potentially valuable as a source of value-added chemicals. The biochar obtained with a high heating value of 22.89 MJ/kg can be used as an adsorbent as well as a solid fuel.
Highlights
Energy demand has been steadily increasing since 1970 due to the rapid growth of population and industrial and technological development, leading to increased use of fossil fuels, the environmental impact of which is perceptible [1]
The bio-oil was characterized by proximate and ultimate analysis, FTIR, 1HNMR and GC–MS analysis whereas the biochar was characterized by proximate, ultimate, FTIR, Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and BET
It may be noted that the red algal biomass was more appropriate for bio-oil production
Summary
Energy demand has been steadily increasing since 1970 due to the rapid growth of population and industrial and technological development, leading to increased use of fossil fuels, the environmental impact of which is perceptible [1]. One of the major concerns with regard to the development of sustainable land-based biomass energy production systems relate to a possible change in the arable land use. From this viewpoint, aquatic biomass offers the advantage over its terrestrial counterpart in that it does not compete with food crops for land usage [4]
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