Multistep Kinetic Model of Biomass Pyrolysis

This work addresses the pyrolysis of lignocellulosic materials, aiming at a further improvement of a comprehensive mathematical modeling of thermochemical biomass conversion. Slow pyrolysis of thick biomass particles, carried out at low temperatures, is experimentally investigated, and these data constitute a useful test for this objective. The particle-scale model handles both kinetics and transport phenomena, due to the need to account for the spatial evolution of temperature and composition inside the thick biomass particles. A previous multistep kinetic model of biomass pyrolysis [1] has been revised on the basis of new experimental data, relating to both temperature profiles and gas phase species distribution [2]. Attention is also paid to the modeling of the secondary gas phase reactions of the released volatiles, with comparison to recent tar-cracking data [5].