Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Thermodynamics and Fluid Mechanics, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, UTM 81310, Skudai, Johor Bahru, Johor Darul T'azim, Malaysia
Bioresour Technol, 2013 Jan;128:578-85.
PMID: 23211483 DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2012.10.084

Abstract

A new technique to pyrolyse biomass in microwave (MW) system is presented in this paper to solve the problem of bio-oil deposition. Pyrolysis of oil palm shell (OPS) biomass was conducted in 800 W and 2.45 GHz frequency MW system using an activated carbon as a MW absorber. The temperature profile, product yield and the properties of the products were found to depend on the stirrer speed and MW absorber percentage. The highest bio-oil yield of 28 wt.% was obtained at 25% MW absorber and 50 rpm stirrer speed. Bio-char showed highest calorific value of the 29.5 MJ/kg at 50% MW absorber and 100 rpm stirrer speed. Bio-oil from this study was rich in phenol with highest detected as 85 area% from the GC-MS results. Thus, OPS bio-oil can become potential alternative to petroleum-based chemicals in various phenolic based applications.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.