Volatile-char interactions during biomass pyrolysis: Cleavage of C-C bond in a β-5 lignin model dimer by amino-modified graphitized carbon nanotube

Yong Huang; Shasha Liu; Jie Zhang; Syed Shatir A Syed-Hassan; Xun Hu; Hongqi Sun; Xun Zhu; Jianbin Zhou; Shu Zhang; Hong Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2020.123192

Volatile-char interactions during biomass pyrolysis: Cleavage of C-C bond in a β-5 lignin model dimer by amino-modified graphitized carbon nanotube

Bioresour Technol. 2020 Jul:307:123192. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2020.123192. Epub 2020 Mar 17.

Authors

Yong Huang¹, Shasha Liu¹, Jie Zhang¹, Syed Shatir A Syed-Hassan², Xun Hu³, Hongqi Sun⁴, Xun Zhu⁵, Jianbin Zhou¹, Shu Zhang⁶, Hong Zhang¹

Affiliations

¹ Lab of Biomass Energy and Functional Carbon Materials, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China.
² Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam 40450, Selangor, Malaysia.
³ School of Material Science and Engineering, University of Jinan, Jinan 250022, Shandong, China.
⁴ School of Engineering, Edith Cowan University, 270 Joondalup Drive, Joondalup, Western Australia 6027, Australia.
⁵ School of Material Science and Engineering, Hanshan Normal University, Chaozhou 521041, China.
⁶ Lab of Biomass Energy and Functional Carbon Materials, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China. Electronic address: [email protected].

PMID: 32220819
DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2020.123192

Abstract

This study investigated the interactions between volatile and char during biomass pyrolysis at 400 °C, employing a β-5 lignin dimer and amino-modified graphitized carbon nanotube (CNT-NH₂) as their models, respectively. The results demonstrated that both -NH₂ and its carrier (CNT) facilitated the conversion of the β-5 dimer, which significantly increased from 9.7% (blank run), to 61.6% (with CNT), and to 96.6% (with CNT-NH₂). CNT mainly favored the breakage of C-O bond in the feedstock to produce dimers with a yield of 55.5%, while CNT-NH₂ promoted the cleavage of both C-O and C-C bonds to yield monomers with a yield up to 63.4%. Such significant changes in the pyrolysis behaviors of the β-5 lignin dimer after the introduction of CNT-NH₂ were considered to be mainly caused by hydrogen-bond formations between -NH₂ and the dimeric feedstock/products, in addition to the π-π stacking between CNT and aromatic rings.

Keywords: Biomass pyrolysis; C–C bond; Volatile−char interactions; β−5 Lignin dimer.

MeSH terms

Biomass
Charcoal
Hot Temperature
Lignin*
Nanotubes, Carbon*
Pyrolysis

Substances

Nanotubes, Carbon
Charcoal
Lignin