EFFECTS OF THERMAL TREATMENT ON DECOMPOSITION OF MALAYSIA BIOMASS

Conventionally, the decomposition of biomass is done by the torrefaction
process, which is the thermal treatment process at the temperature range of 225 - 300
°C that aims to produce a fuel with increased energy density by decomposing the
reactive hemicelluloses fraction. However, there is no formal research was done to
investigate the effect of thermal treatment at the temperature range 100 to 300 °C. The
objective of this research is to investigate the effect of drying and decomposition
behaviour at temperature of 100 - 300 °C thermal treatment of Malaysia biomass.
Kernel shell, one of the types of biomass palm oil waste has been chosen in this
experiment to study on the effect of the thermal treatment at six different treatment
temperatures which are 130, 160, 190, 220, 250 and 300 °C and under three different
treatment times, which are 30, 60 and 90 minutes. This project is to be carried out using
tubular type reactor under nitrogen atmosphere. Several analyses on the treated samples
had been carried out, which are ash-content analysis, moisture content analysis, calorific
analysis, elementary analysis and energy yield analysis. The results shows that the
longer treatment time will give higher quality solid fuel. However, there is no concrete
prove to support the hypothesis of decomposition of biomass at the lower temperature
than normal torrefaction process.