Pyrolysis of Empty Fruit Bunch (EFB) in a vertical fixed bed reactor

Uncontrolled uses of fossil fuels lead to serious energy problems and since Malaysia is one of the largest producers of palm oil in the world, it has caused a lot of waste such as empty fruit bunches (EFB) which can actually be converted into renewable energy via pyrolysis. In this work, firstly the characterizations of the EFB were analyzed such as elemental, proximate and component analysis. The pyrolysis experiment of empty fruit bunch using vertical fixed-bed reactor was conducted at different pyrolysis temperature range from 300 - 600 °C and the particle size of EFB was also varied from 125-250 μm with constant nitrogen flow rate of 100 cm3/min, heating rate of 30 °C/min, and 30 minutes hold time. For the effect of temperature, the optimum pyrolysis temperature was 500 °C to produce maximum yield of bio-oil which is 39.2 wt. % while 46.13 wt. % is the highest bio-oil yield produced at size of 500-710 μm for the effect of particle size. The analysis on bio-oil was conducted by using Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) with the results shows for the presents of phenol/alcohol group, ketones and C-O bond. The bio-oil obtained is in the acidic condition with pH 3.5.