Bio-Oil Production from Date Palm Surface Fibers: Thermo-Kinetic and Pyrolysis GC/MS Analysis

TL;DR

This paper studies the production of bio-oil from date palm surface fibers using pyrolysis and finds it rich in aromatics, useful for energy and chemical recovery.

Contribution

The study provides new thermo-kinetic and pyrolysis GC/MS data on bio-oil derived from date palm surface fibers.

Findings

DPSF pyrolysis bio-oil contains 42.28% aliphatics, 38.68% aromatics, and 13.47% furans/oxygenates.

Benzene and toluene are major aromatic components in the bio-oil.

The lignocellulosic nature of DPSFs makes them suitable for bioenergy and targeted chemical recovery.

Abstract

Date palm surface fibers (DPSFs) are abundantly available
as municipal
and agricultural biomass wastes from date palm trees, especially in
the Middle Eastern and North African countries, especially United
Arab Emirates. DPSFs are lignocellulosic in nature and therefore have
immense potential to be used for bioenergy purposes. This study presents
the conversion-dependent pyrolysis behavior, kinetic analysis, and
bio-oil qualitative investigation. DPSFs were analyzed using thermogravimetric
analysis at nonisothermal heating rates of 10–40 °C/min
at a temperature range of 20–750 °C. Activation energy
(E
a) was calculated using model-free kinetics
approach using Ozawa–Flynn–Wall (OFW), Kissinger–Akahira–Sunose
(KAS), and Starink (STK) methods. E
a analysis
helps understand the link up of degradation behavior as a function
of the conversion and fragmentation of cellulose, hemicellulose, and
lignin. The pyrolysis of DPSFs was performed in a horizontal quartz
tube flow reactor at a heating rate of 40 °C/min and within a
temperature range of 20–400 °C. The condensed bio-oil
was tested for qualitative analysis using a gas chromatography and
mass spectroscopy (GC/MS) technique. E
a values for the active pyrolysis region within a conversion range
of 0.2–0.8 were 154.52, 152.40, and 152.37 kJ/mol for the OFW,
KAS, and STK models, respectively. Using GC/MS, the qualitative assessment
of bio-oil, based on normalized peak area percentages, showed that
it consisted mainly of aliphatics (42.28%), aromatics (38.68%), and
furans/other oxygenates (13.47%). 10.54% benzene and 10.94% toluene
were the main contributors of aromatics, and 6.735 furfural was a
dominant furanic compound. The result of this study provides an information
on the composition of DPSF pyrolyzed bio-oil and suggests that the
aromatic rich nature will lead to targeted recovery of BTX/phenolics
compounds as well as for bioenergy applications.

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