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Abstract:
The last 200 years saw an increased consumption of fossil fuel, which until now still remains the dominant energy source globally. Overconsumption of fossil fuel not only raises a big concern of depletion, but also causes a big issue of environment pollution and global warming. Moreover, over dependence on fossil fuel for economic growth poses a threat to energy and national security for most nations as well because fossil fuel is an unequal distributed resource and mainly concentrated on a few specific regions. Turning to renewable energy sources (e.g., biomass) or household waste for energy production and consumption helps address these concerns in an environmentally friendly and sustainable manner. Among energy production techniques, pyrolysis process raises a worldwide interest from researchers and industry as it is a simple but promising technique capable of producing transport fuels in a large scale level.
The aim of this work is to obtain high quality fuels derived from waste resources such as biomass or plastic waste, which are usually deposited, utilizing a pyrolysis process. To achieve this goal, a detailed understanding of different pyrolysis oil systems is required. Additionally, for a better understanding of the conversion process, a sophisticated analytical method needs to be developed that allows analyzing the complex chemical mixtures. The different types of compounds exhibit different properties, which stresses its special imortance.
A wide range of oxygen containing compounds can be detected for biofuel derived from biomass or lignin pyrolysis process by using high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) in combination with complementary atmospheric pressure ionization (API) technique, indicating the low quality of initial produced bio-fuel. This can be upgraded through a catalytic hydrotreating process to produce petro-like fuel, with the most abundant class detected as hydrocarbon. In comparison to biomass-based materials, carbonaceous plastic waste has a higher heating value, some of which are pure hydrocarbon plastics (e.g., polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene). A highly efficient pyrolysis transformation of plastics to fuels can be obtained not only for single plastic, but for complex plastic mixtures as well. The reaction mechanism has been studied by using gas chromatography (GC)-electron ionization (EI)-Orbitrap for detailed analysis. Semi-quantification of initial plastic pyrolysis oil reveals products with a wide carbon atoms distribution, belonging to a mixture of gasoline, diesel and wax range compounds. A lab scale distillation process has been successfully introduced to separate pyrolysis plastic fuels for different purpose of usage.
