Catalytic pyrolysis of biomass waste using montmorillonite-supported ultrafine iron nanoparticles for enhanced bio-oil yield and quality

Abstract

The catalytic fast pyrolysis process is a promising method for converting biomass waste into bio-oil, where the catalyst plays a crucial role in determining the yield and quality of the products. In this study, ultrafine iron nanoparticles were incorporated onto a montmorillonite substrate through the pyrolyzing coordinated polymer method to enhance liquid fuel production via catalytic pyrolysis of biomass waste. The catalyst showed a uniform distribution of iron on the montmorillonite surface, indicating that the incorporation was successful. Catalytic pyrolysis led to an increase in liquid yields and a decrease in gas product yields compared to direct pyrolysis. The highest bio-oil yield obtained was 56.9% during the catalytic pyrolysis of corncob, which was found to be particularly well-suited for the production of bio-oil. Furthermore, the proposed reaction pathway was based on identifying the composition of the bio-oil, which was further supported by quantum chemical calculations of chemical bond strength and the likelihood of free radical attacks. These findings demonstrate the potential of using montmorillonite-supported ultrafine iron nanoparticles to enhance bio-oil yield and quality in biomass pyrolysis processes.

Keywords

Catalytic fast pyrolysis / Biomass / Biorefinery / Bio-oil / Montmorillonite

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Wenfei Cai: Writing - original draft, Visualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Xiefei Zhu: Writing - review & editing, Validation, Resources, Formal analysis. Reeti Kumar: Validation, Software, Resources, Formal analysis. Zhi Zhu: Validation, Software, Resources. Jian Ye: Validation, Software, Resources. Jun Zhao: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Supervision, Project administration, Methodology, Investigation.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Hong Kong Innovation and Technology Fund (PRP/044/19FX) and Environment and Conservation Fund (Ref. 2021–09, 2022–127).

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gerr.2024.100085.

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