Thermophysical Properties Measurements for Bio-Oil Upgrading Process

The use of biofuel as a road transportation fuel is increasing throughout Europe and other industrialized countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to improve the security of fuel supply. Bio-oil produced from biomass pyrolysis is renewable liquid fuel and can also be used for production of chemicals. Upgrading of the bio-oil to transportation fuel is technically feasible and needs further development. Thermophysical properties of bio-oil components have recently received attention because these data are required to obtain accurate thermodynamic models of the compounds formed during pyrolysis. However, the experimental data on the thermophysical properties of the bio-oil is very limited in the literature. The objective of our research is to measure the thermophysical properties of the main components existing in the bio-oil using different techniques and newly built apparatuses. The experimental data were used for the estimation of the bio-oil composition in biomass fast pyrolysis.  The estimation was done using a mathematical optimization model based on mass and energy balance in GAMS (General Algebraic Modeling System).