Production of hydrocarbon fuels from biomass using catalytic pyrolysis under helium and hydrogen environments

This study is focused on hydrocarbon production through changing carrier gas and using zeolite catalysts during pyrolysis. A large reduction in high molecular weight, oxygenated compounds was noticed when the carrier gas was changed from helium to hydrogen during pyrolysis. A catalytic pyrolysis was conducted using two different methods based on how the biomass and catalysts were contacted together. For both methods, there was no significant change in the carbon yield with the change in pyrolysis environment. However, the mixing-method produced higher aromatic hydrocarbons than the bed-method. In addition, two methods were also tested using two ratios of biomass to catalyst. Nonetheless, there was no significant increase in hydrocarbon yield as the catalyst loading was increased from two to five times of biomass in the catalyst-bed method. In contrast to this, a significant increase was noticed for the catalytic-mixing method when the biomass to catalyst loading was increased from 1:4 to 1:9.

► A large reduction in high molecular weight oxygenated compounds was noticed when the carrier gas was changed from helium to hydrogen during conventional pyrolysis. ► The catalyst mixing-method gave the higher amount of hydrocarbons than the catalyst bed-method during pyrolysis, relevant to pyrolysis environment. ► In the case of a 1:9 biomass–catalyst mixture under helium environment, total aromatic carbon yield was 41.5%, which is about 51% of theoretical yield from pinewood.