Pyrolysis of thick biomass particles: experimental and kinetic modeling

The aim of this work is to analyze some new experimental data of pyrolysis of thick woody biomass particles with the help of a general and comprehensive mathematical model. This multiphase and multiscale problem involves strong interactions between chemical kinetics, both in the solid and in the gas phase, and heat/mass transfer phenomena. Detailed experimental measurements have been obtained in an original lab scale reactor. This setup is designed to measure the products yielded along the pyrolysis of a single biomass (beech) particle as well as the temperature profiles into the sample. Experiments are carried out with pyrolysis temperatures ranging between 723 K and 1073 K. Lower-temperature pyrolysis data for poplar from a second reactor are also presented. These results constitute a very useful data set to tune and validate a predictive multistep kinetic model of biomass pyrolysis (Ranzi et al. 2008) and to analyse and discuss the relative effect of different phenomena. The thermal behavior of the pyrolysis process is particularly highlighted.