(2017) Energy Conversion and Management_Evaluating the susceptibility of pyrolysis of monosaccharide, disaccharide, and polysaccharide to CO₂

Lee J., Tsang Y.F., Oh J.-I., Lee S.-R., Kwon E.E.

(Elsevier Ltd) Energy Conversion and Management ISSN: 1968904 Vol.138 Issue. Article No. DOI: 10.1016/j.enconman.2017.02.009

This study is aiming at exploring the genuine role of CO₂ in pyrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass by investigating the susceptibility of pyrolysis of monosaccharide (e.g., xylose and glucose), disaccharide (e.g., sucrose), and polysaccharide (e.g., woody biomass) to CO₂. To do this, the thermal degradation of these four biomass samples was characterized in N₂ and CO₂. The thermal characterization results reveal that the physical aspects of biomass decomposition (i.e., thermal degradation rate and residual mass difference) associated with CO₂ were nearly the same; however, the chemical aspects were significantly different. In other words, CO₂ enhanced thermal cracking of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) generated from thermal degradation of biomass. In addition, our experiment results show that xylose (a major constituent of hemicellulose) and lignin exhibited a high sensitivity to CO₂ in pyrolysis. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Grant funded by the Korean Government (MSIP) (No. NRF-2015H1D3A1066513).