Abstract

Extensive resources and efforts have been dedicated to assess opportunities for using locally available biomass to produce energy, reduce CO2 emissions, and lower reliance on petroleum. The use of lignocellulosic biomass is promising since it is readily available in vast amounts and there are processes for converting different biomass sources to useful products of particularly interest in liquid transportation fuels. Energy based in biomass is a source of renewable energy from organic and inorganic matter formed in a biological or mechanical process. Although fossil fuels, such as petroleum, oil and coal, have their foundation in ancient biomass, they have been out of the carbon cycle for a long time. Their combustion consequently disturbs the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere. One promising technology that has gained interest in the past few years is pyrolysis and gasification. Although fast pyrolysis has been known and studied for many years; due the complexity of fast pyrolysis reaction mechanisms there are still a lot more to investigate to increase the understanding on fast pyrolysis of biomass. While it is scientifically viable to exploit lignocellulosic materials and organic wastes into energy, chemicals and fuels, it is far from an economic process and the cost needs to be lowered. It also must be demonstrated that a commercial scale biomass utilization process is environmentally sound, and there is a need to find an inexpensive and widely available lignocellulosic source of biomass The core objective of this research is to study the influence of pyrolysis as a pretreatment on spent grain from brewers waste to improve syngas production from gasification. Biochar produced from the biomass pyrolysis was used in order to obtain compounds with higher carbon content to subsequent undergo a gasification process. In addition, commercial activated carbon was gasified to compare the yield of syngas produced in the gasification of biochar. Brewers waste was pyrolyzed under a nitrogen environment in different operating conditions; heating rates, reaction times, and pyrolysis temperatures. Activated carbon and biochar gasification was done at 850 °C and 1 atm of pressure for two hours using water as gasifying agent in a fluidized bed reactor. Pyrolysis at 300°C produced a greater yield of biochar leading to a higher concentration of syngas produced during gasification of the waste biomass studied compared with the commercial activated carbon products obtained. Finally, the processes of chemical thermo-decomposition pyrolysis and gasification applied to brewers waste, allow to obtain products with higher added value, making possible the production of synthesis gas from the gasification of solid compounds obtained from pyrolysis of beer bagasse waste. These studies lay the groundwork for longer-term efforts aimed at using waste biomass as a sustainable way to add value to solid waste biomass.