Pyrolysis of raffia palm fronds in a fixed bed reactor: process optimization and bio-oil characterization

A fixed bed reactor was designed, fabricated and used for raffia frond pyrolysis. This work focused on the study of the effect of temperature and time on pyrolysis of raffia fronds using response surface methodology (RSM). The ultimate and proximate analysis as well as thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) were performed to determine the chemical and thermal properties of the biomass fronds. The optimum pyrolysis oil conditions were temperature of 700 oC, and time of 75 min with a corresponding liquid yield of 52.31 wt %. Model validation using coefficient of determination (R2) was 0.6985. The extracted Pyrolysis oil was also characterized by physiochemical analysis, ultimate analysis and chemical components using FTIR and GC-MS found in bio-oil were also identified. In FTIR examination of all the functional groups found that oxygen predominates in the chemical component. While for the GC-MS, it was noted that the bio-oil's chemical composition corresponds to a mixture of several aromatic and oxygenated molecules, such as aldehydes, phenols, ketones, and carboxylic acids.