Aerosol-based method for investigating biomass char reactivity at high temperatures

An aerosol-based method was proposed and developed to characterize particles fragmented from biomass chars during oxidation. The chars were prepared from both wood and miscanthus pellets under various pyrolysis conditions. Char fragments with aerodynamic diameters in the range of 0.5–10 μm were suspended and transported in a reactive gas through an aerosol reactor, which was heated by an electric oven. The oxidation of char particles in the reactor was investigated by determining on-line the particle size distributions before and after passage through the reactor using an aerodynamic particle sizer (APS) spectrometer. The interpretation of APS data was evaluated by both experiments and models in which the fine char particles were assumed to keep either constant density or constant diameter during the oxidation process. The results indicate that the aerosol-based method can be used to determine reaction kinetics of char particles in the high-temperature range, where oxidation is normally controlled by diffusion limitation if measuring with the conventional techniques. The application of the aerosol method indicated that high pyrolysis temperature and prolonged retention time will reduce the char reactivity.