Pyrolysis as a key process in biomass combustion and thermochemical conversion

Abstract

Biomass is a fuel with a highly volatile content and due to that, pyrolysis as a part of the combustion process, has a dominant role in the overall process development, as well as on final products and the process efficiency. It is of key importance to investigate the influence of the process parameters; as temperature, furnace/reactor environment, fuel properties, type, particle size, geometry, and the structure of the pyrolysis process has an influence regards the design of the combustion/pyrolysis equipment and the final products of the processes. This paper gives some results of the investigation?s related to this problem, mainly focussing on wooden biomass as the most important biomass type, as well as a comparison with relevant documented literature. Besides that, pyrolysis based technologies are one of the key directions in synthetic fuels production based on biomass. Biomass pyrolysis process parameters are crucial in reactor design as well as the quantity and quality of the final products. This paper provides discussion dedicated to this aspect with a focus on slow pyrolysis, targeting charcoal as the key product, and fast pyrolysis, targeting synthetic gas as the key product.