Bio-oil Production from Pyrolysis of Rice Husk

The process of pyrolysis of biomass has been very useful to convert organic materials into a useful source of renewable energy which is bio-oil. However, the properties of bio-oil produced such as oxygenated compound, carboxylic acids, as well as the water content will depend on the type of plants or organic material it was derived. Therefore, the focus here is to study the properties of bio-oil derived from different sources of organic materials, in this case is risk husk.
We are now facing a big world crisis which is the depleting of fossil fuels energy resources. Furthermore, the combustion of fuels has led to the environmental pollution because of the carbon emission. The discovery of new sources of energy like bio-oil that have the potential to replace the current fuel and give no harm to the environment will bring a new hope to the world.
However, the properties of bio-oil are not stable because of the various compounds in the bio-oil which can react through many chemical reactions. During storage for example, the polymerizations reaction will occur resulting in adverse changes in the bio-oil’s properties, especially increasing viscosity over time. Basically, the scope of study will cover the reaction condition such as particle size, temperature, heating rate, and nitrogen gas flow rate in the reactor. The responding aspects that need to be analyzed are organic liquid product yield, chemical and physical properties of the bio-oil produced as well the chemical composition of the bio-oil produced.
The signal to noise ratio and ANOVA table is constructed to identify the credibility of the results. Taguchi method will be used in the experiment to array the variables and to know the credibility of the result. From the analysis, the optimum operating condition for the pyrolysis process is using 0.355-0.5mm particle size, at 450 ˚C with 10˚C/min heating rate and 100ml/min of nitrogen flow rate which has the highest yield of 31.82 weight %.