Continuous fast pyrolysis of biomass at high temperature in a fluidized bed reactor

In order to perform biomass pyrolysis a continuous fluidized bed reactor (bench scale unit) has been assembled. The influence of experimental conditions such as heating-up time and optimum particle diameter is presented. By feeding the biomass (almond shells) directly into the bubbling bed, pyrolysis has been performed at temperatures ranging from 730° to 930°C at constant feed rate (44 g/h). Remarkable increase of H2 in the product gas is observed when steam rather than an inert carrier such as nitrogen is used thus confirming the potential of this approach.