The effects of holding time and the sweeping nitrogen gas flowrates on the pyrolysis of EFB using a fixed–bed reactor

Abstract

The abundance of empty fruit bunch (EFB) was generated over time as the by-products during oil palm fresh fruit bunches processing for the production of crude palm oil. The EFB was viewed as renewable energy resources. In this study, two series of the EFB pyrolysis experiments were conducted using a fixed-bed reactor to determine the effects of holding time and the sweeping nitrogen gas flowrates on the pyrolysis yields. In each experiment, the pyrolysis temperature was raised to 442.15 °C with a ramprate of 50 °C/min and nitrogen flowrate of 150 cm3/min. The first series of experiment was conducted to determine the effect of holding time on the distribution of pyrolysis products. Therefore, the holding time was varied at 6, 8, 10 and 12 minutes. It was identified that at 10 minutes holding time, the highest bio-oil yield of 45.72% was obtained with bio-char yield of 25.88% and 28.40% gas produced. In the second series of experiments, the effect of nitrogen flow rates was investigated by varying the nitrogen flowrates at 150, 200, 300,400 and 500 cm/min. It was identified that at nitrogen flowrates of 200 cm3/min, the bio-oil yield of 46.02% was at its maximum with bio-char and gas production of 26.69% and 27.29% respectively.