Kinetics study on biomass pyrolysis for fuel gas production

Kinetic knowledge is of great importance in achieving good control of the pyrolysis and gasification process and optimising system design. An overall kinetic pyrolysis scheme is therefore addressed here. The kinetic modelling incorporates the following basic steps: the degradation of the virgin biomass materials into primary products (tar, gas and semi-char), the decomposition of primary tar into secondary products and the continuous interaction between primary gas and char. The last step is disregarded completely by models in the literature. Analysis and comparison of predicted results from different kinetic schemes and experimental data on our fixed bed pyrolyser yielded very positive evidence to support our kinetic scheme.