Full Length Research Paper

Influence of metal elements on the evolution of CO and CH₄ during the pyrolysis of sawdust

Hou-Zhang Tan*, Xue-Bin Wang, Yan-Qing Niu and Tong-Mo Xu

State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Shaanxi 710049, People’s Republic of China.

*Corresponding author. E-mail: tanhouzhang@yahoo.cn. Tel: +086-029-82668784. Fax: +86-029-82668703.

Accepted 13 November, 2009

   Abstract

Metal elements in biomass ash have been considered to affect the decomposition of large molecule during the pyrolysis of biomass. In this paper, effect of metal elements on the evolution of carbon monoxide (CO) and methane (CH₄) was investigated during the pyrolysis of sawdust in a fixed bed reactor and species were detected by Fourier Transform Infrared analyzer. Results showed that all the metal additions restrained the yields of CO and CH₄ and the quantity order of production was Fe₂O₃<ZnO<NaCl<CaO<KCl< Al₂O₃<No-addition. The addition of Al₂O₃, Fe₂O₃ and ZnO shortened the completion time of CO and CH₄. Statistical analysis demonstrated that all the metal additions lowered the reaction rate of biomass pyrolysis dynamically.

Key words: Biomass, pyrolysis, carbon monoxide, methane, metal element.