Thermogravimetric and Online Gas Analysis on various Biomass Fuels

In this work, the biomass property is evaluated based on pyrolysis behavior of biomass fuels by means of TGA and online gas analysis. Wood, sawdust, pine bark, peat, straw, black liquor and microalgae are chosen as the biomass feedstocks for the pyrolysis study. The measurement results show high volatile content for algae and black liquor (around 85%) and low volatile content for pine bark and peat (around 69%). Differently from woody biomass, the DTG curve of straw has a single dominant peak at much lower temperature, which suggests a dominant component of hemicellulose in biomass, while algae and peat have a broader temperature specturm of devolatilization but much lower peak temperature. CO2 is released first and H2 later in the pyrolysis process for all biomass feedstocks, whileas the peak of CO formation follows CO2 formation trend for most feedstocks used, except for peat and pine bark which give a peak later at high temperature. This indicates secondary reactions of tar cracking, steam reforming and char gasification.