Publications

Abstract : Biomass feed comes in many varieties, but have common chief constituents of hemicellulose, cellulose, and lignin. As the relative proportions of these constituents may vary, customization of the pyrolysis process conditions is required to produce a desired product profile. By recognizing the sources of variation, the reactor settings may be intelligently controlled, to achieve optimal operation. These considerations include biomass classification, feed rate, moisture content, particle size, and interparticle thermal gradients (which arise during pyrolysis based on heating rate and temperature distribution). This chapter addresses the optimization of product profiles during biomass pyrolysis from a modeling perspective. Fundamental models for packed bed and fluidized bed pyrolyzers are developed, using kinetics from existing literature. The proposed optimization approach (inclusive of the kinetic and process models) can guide practical achievement of desired product profiles of the biomass pyrolysis process