Pyrolysis of agricultural residues in the local area of Nakhon Pathom Province

Abstract

To reduce problems of agricultural residues management in the local area of Nakhon Pathom Province and add value to it, 3 agricultural residues i.e. pomelo peel, bagasse and cassia pods were brought to a pyrolysis process to obtain the higher value products including bio-oil, char and fuel-gas. It can be found that the cassia pods provided the highest bio-oil yield (33.16 wt%) followed by the bagasse and pomelo peel (28.40 and 20.10 wt%). This is due to the lower moisture content in the cassia pods compared to the two others, leading to a steam reforming which is a process to convert bio-oil into fuelgas being less likely to occur. In addition, it was found that the bio-oil from the cassia pods also had the lowest acidity (pH 3.0) while the bio-oil from the pomelo peel had the highest heat content value (22.39 MJ/kg). For the chars obtained from the 3 materials, it was found that all of them had the relatively low surface area ranging from 13.19 to 23.24 m2/g and found that the char from the bagasse had the lowest ash content followed by the cassia pods and pomelo peel.