Journal of Fundamentals of Renewable Energy and Applications
Open Access
ISSN: 2090-4541
+44 1300 500008
ISSN: 2090-4541
+44 1300 500008
Patricia Pizarro1, Javier Fermoso1, H�©ctor Hernando1, Angel Peral2, Prabhas Jana1, Thangaraju M Sankaranarayanan1, Juan M Coronado1 and David P Serrano2
Scientific Tracks Abstracts: J Fundam Renewable Energy Appl
The viability, sustainability, and overall commercial readiness of biofuels are still a matter of intense debate. While the potential
benefits of replacing fossil fuels by liquids from renewable sources are obvious, substantial barriers for implementation
must still be overcome. Biomass forestry and agricultural residues can be thermally decomposed via fast-pyrolysis to
maximize the production of bio-oil. This bio-oil offers advantages in terms of storage, transport and flexibility in applications
like fuels for transportation. Nevertheless, this application is still in a relatively early stage of development, and fundamental
understanding of the thermal decomposition behavior of biomass during fast-pyrolysis is crucial to control the end-product
composition. Bio-oil obtained by conventional no-catalytic fast-pyrolysis is formed by complex mixtures of species derived
from the fragmentation of the three main components of the biomass (cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin), and it contains a
high oxygen concentration (35-40 wt.%), acid pH and water contents between 20-50% wt. Catalytic fast-pyrolysis can promote
partial deoxygenation reactions that could proceed by different pathways: Dehydration, decarbonylation and decarboxylation,
leading to the H2O, CO and CO2 formation, respectively. In this work, catalytic and no-catalytic fast-pyrolysis of Eucalyptus
woodchips has been carried out at a lab-scale setup. For catalytic tests, nanostructured materials having mild acidic properties
and a high accessibility, such as, h-ZSM5 zeolite, have been employed. The catalytic properties of these materials for biomass
catalytic pyrolysis have been also modified and adjusted by incorporation of different metal oxides. Likewise, Pd-containing
h-ZSM5 zeolite has been tested. The catalysts activity has been analyzed in terms of their properties for bio-oil deoxygenation
in comparison with those results obtained for no-catalytic tests. For that purpose, several parameters like: mass products yield
(gas, char, coke and bio-oil (bio-oil+H2O); gas composition (H2, CO, CO2 and C1-C3); bio-oil elemental analysis and H2O
content, among others, have been determined. The catalysts used in the present work, gave rise to an increase of the gas yield,
mostly due to the higher production of both CO (from 3.5 to 6.4-10.8 wt%) and CO2 (from 8.2 to 10.9-15.9 wt%). On the other
hand, two phases can be visibly distinguished in the bio-oil fraction, organic and aqueous, as a consequence of its higher H2O
content, changing from 26.9 to 33.8-41.1 wt% when h-ZSM5 or metal/h-ZSM5 catalyst bed was installed into the reactor. All
of these resulted in partially deoxygenated bio-oils, whose oxygen contents decreased from 37.3 to 27.5-32.3 wt%; but to the
detriment also of the bio-oil yield, which decreased from 42.5 to 26.1-30.7 wt.%.
Patricia Pizarro completed her academic degree in Chemical Engineering in 1999 at Complutense University of Madrid. After that, she joined Rey Juan Carlos University
where she received her PhD in 2005 with the Extraordinary Doctorate Award. Currently, she is working as an Associate Professor at the Chemical and Environmental
Engineering Group of Rey Juan Carlos University and as an Associate Researcher at IMDEA Energy Institute (Móstoles, Madrid). Her research is mainly focused on the
design of heterogeneous catalysts and materials for different chemical processes such as hydrogen production, energy storage and biofuels generation. She is co-author
of 30 scientific publications; she has presented 58 communications to national and international conferences and has participated in 22 research projects.