Biorefining

The Center has recently installed a pilot Microwave Assisted Pyrolysis (MAP) system in its pilot lab. The system is designed to process biomass feedstocks ranging from corn stover to wood chips to MSW to bio-oils, burnable gas, and char solids.  The technical advantages of microwave assisted pyrolysis (MAP) over conventional pyrolysis include: (1) Microwave heating is uniform and easy to control; (2) It does not require high degree of feedstock grinding (e.g., large chunk of wood logs can be used) and can handle mixed feedstock (e.g., municipal solid wastes); (3) The conversion products (pyrolytic gas and bio-oils) are cleaner than those from gasification and conventional pyrolysis because our process does not have to use biomass powder and does not require agitation and fluidization; (4) The syngas produced has higher heating value since it is not diluted by the carrying gas for fluidizing the biomass materials. (5) Microwave heating is a mature technology and development of microwave heating system for biomass pyrolysis is of low cost. Wood wastes, sludge, slaughter wastes, municipal solid wastes have been tested with microwave pyrolysis. This research is funded in part by IREE, LCCMR, DOE, USDA, and DOT.