Fast Pyrolysis of Hemp in a Bubbling Fluidized Bed Reactor

Biomass has been focused as one of the alternative energy sources since it is renewable, abundant worldwide, eco-friendly, and carbon neutral.  Hemp is a kind of biomass which can be easily cultivated with rapid growth rate. Also, a lot of hemp by-products are produced from textile industry. In this study, hemp has been studied to understand pyrolysis reaction characteristics and fast pyrolysis to evaluate the efficiency of bio-energy production. Pyrolysis kinetics of hemp by-products was studied using a micro tubing reactor. Simple pyrolysis mechanism was proposed and the reaction rate constants were calculated. Hemp by-products were fast pyrolyzed in a bubbling fluidized bed reactor at various reaction conditions. The effects of pyrolysis temperature between 440 °C and 560 °C on product yields were investigated. The yield of bio-oil was changed between 16.11 wt% and 39.44 wt%, and showed higher bio-oil yield with increasing reaction temperature. Aromatic compounds such as furfural, 1.2-benzenedial, 2.3-dihydro-benzofuran and phenol derivatives in bio-oil were major products by the analysis of GC-MS.