EFFECTS OF THERMAL TREATMENT ON DECOMPOSITION OF MALAYSIA BIOMASS

• Main Author: Ayob, Muhammed Syahidan
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS 2010
• Subjects: TP Chemical technology
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/9457/1/2010%20-%20Effects%20of%20Thermal%20Treatment%20on%20Decomposition%20of%20Malaysia%20Biomass.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/9457/

Conventionally, the decomposition of biomass is done by the torrefaction process, which is the thermal treatment process at the temperature range of 225 - 300 °C that aims to produce a fuel with increased energy density by decomposing the reactive hemicelluloses fraction. However, there is no formal research was done to investigate the effect of thermal treatment at the temperature range 100 to 300 °C. The objective of this research is to investigate the effect of drying and decomposition behaviour at temperature of 100 - 300 °C thermal treatment of Malaysia biomass. Kernel shell, one of the types of biomass palm oil waste has been chosen in this experiment to study on the effect of the thermal treatment at six different treatment temperatures which are 130, 160, 190, 220, 250 and 300 °C and under three different treatment times, which are 30, 60 and 90 minutes. This project is to be carried out using tubular type reactor under nitrogen atmosphere. Several analyses on the treated samples had been carried out, which are ash-content analysis, moisture content analysis, calorific analysis, elementary analysis and energy yield analysis. The results shows that the longer treatment time will give higher quality solid fuel. However, there is no concrete prove to support the hypothesis of decomposition of biomass at the lower temperature than normal torrefaction process.