Modeling of fluidized bed reactor for bio oil production from oil palm empty fruit bunch by pyrolysis process

Abstract

This present work aimed to study the modeling of bio oil production from the empty fruit bunch (EFB) biomass by fast pyrolysis. The heat diffusion equation and global chemical kinetic scheme were used to model the heat conduction along the radius of the empty fruit bunch particle and to predict yields of three products (bio oil, gas and char) over the EFB particle size range 150-500 um at the reaction temperature range of 723-873 K. The heat transfer in solids and chemical reaction engineering module were chosen to predict the effects of reaction parameters by finite element based COMSOL Multiphysics 4.3b software. The results showed that the surface and center reaction temperatures of EFB particles gave a suitable reaction time across the particle sizes. The predicted pyrolysis product yields for various vapor residence times were compared with reported experiment yields. The simulations of heat transfer and product yield for fast pyrolysis of EFB were in a good agreement with reported experimental data.