A review on thermochemical treatment of biomass: Pyrolysis of olive mill wastes in comparison with other types of biomass

Abstract

Each year, a great quantity of olive oil is produced by the unit mill of trituration. This activity generates two by-products named olive mill wastewater and olive mill solid waste representing major potential waste and environmental problem. However, there is growing interest in pyrolysis as a technology to treat wastes to produce valuable oil, char and gas products. The major important aim of waste pyrolysis is to produce liquid fuel or bio-oil, which is easy to store, transport and can be an alternative to energy source. The key influence on the product yield is the type of biomass feedstock and operating parameters (especially temperature and heating rate). It is important to investigate the effect of variables on response yield and impulse about their optimization. This study reviews operating variable from existing literature on olive mill wastes (OMSW and OMWW) in comparison with various types of biomass. The major operating variables include type of feedstock, final temperature of pyrolysis, heating rate and particle size. The scale of this paper is to analyse the influence of operating parameters on production of pyrolysis bio-oil, char and gaseous products.