Catalytic Intermediate Pyrolysis of Napier Grass in a Fixed Bed Reactor with ZSM-5, HZSM-5 and Zinc-Exchanged Zeolite-A as the Catalyst

Isah Yakub Mohammed, Feroz Kabir Kazi, Suzana Yusup, Peter Adeniyi Alaba, Yahaya Muhammad Sani and Yousif Abdalla Abakr
Additional contact information
Isah Yakub Mohammed: Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, Jalan Broga, Semenyih 43500, Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
Feroz Kabir Kazi: Department of Engineering and Mathematics, Sheffield Hallam University, City Campus, Howard Street, Sheffield S1 1WB, UK
Suzana Yusup: Department of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Teknology Petronas (UTP) Bandar Seri Iskandar, Tronoh 31750, Malaysia
Peter Adeniyi Alaba: Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur 50603, Malaysia
Yahaya Muhammad Sani: Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur 50603, Malaysia
Yousif Abdalla Abakr: Department of Mechanical, Manufacturing and Material Engineering, the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, Jalan Broga, Semenyih 43500, Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

Energies, 2016, vol. 9, issue 4, 1-17

Abstract: The environmental impact from the use of fossil fuel cum depletion of the known fossil oil reserves has led to increasing interest in liquid biofuels made from renewable biomass. This study presents the first experimental report on the catalytic pyrolysis of Napier grass, an underutilized biomass source, using ZSM-5, 0.3HZSM-5 and zinc exchanged zeolite-A catalyst. Pyrolysis was conducted in fixed bed reactor at 600 °C, 30 °C/min and 7 L/min nitrogen flow rate. The effect of catalyst-biomass ratio was evaluated with respect to pyrolysis oil yield and composition. Increasing the catalyst loading from 0.5 to 1.0 wt % showed no significant decrease in the bio-oil yield, particularly, the organic phase and thereafter decreased at catalyst loadings of 2.0 and 3.0 wt %. Standard analytical methods were used to establish the composition of the pyrolysis oil, which was made up of various aliphatic hydrocarbons, aromatics and other valuable chemicals and varied greatly with the surface acidity and pore characteristics of the individual catalysts. This study has demonstrated that pyrolysis oil with high fuel quality and value added chemicals can be produced from pyrolysis of Napier grass over acidic zeolite based catalysts.

Keywords: Napier grass; intermediate pyrolysis; catalytic deoxygenation; zeolite; bio-oil characterization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/9/4/246/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/9/4/246/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:9:y:2016:i:4:p:246-:d:66676

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().