Exploration of Rarely Researched Algal and Lignocellulosic Biomass to Produce Hydrocarbons and Fuel Additive

The petroleum depletion over a period of time and the need of value added petrochemicals drives a force to develop fruitful technologies. The recent trends in renewable energy production are yet to qualify the energy needs. Thermal processes for biofuels from biomass results biofuels in form of solid, liquid and gas which can be utilized as the fuel and value added products. Among these technologies, pyrolysis is a cost effective technology on pilot scale as well as it can be deliver to form a bio-refinery. Authors conducted pyrolysis experiment at 550 °C temperature for the conversion of algal biomass and at 700 °C for conversion of lignocellulosic biomass to get bio-fuels and hydrocarbons. Both the sources of biomass are available at tremendous amount around the globe but scarcely researched. Main product obtained is pyrolytic bio-oil, the bio-oil from algal biomass resulted in the higher heating value (HHV) of 16.59 MJ/kg whereas bio-oil from lignocellulosic biomass resulted in HHV of 20.32 MJ/kg. Further the bio-oils are characterized using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR) and the analysis shows the no. of functional groups present in them. Gas Chromatography - Mass Spectroscopy (GC-MS) results in large number of hydrocarbons present in the bio-oils. Thus, these characterization techniques revealed the fuel potential of both the biomass to be used as an energy-crops for production of energy in a sustainable manner.