The Effect of pyrolysis conditions to produce levoglucosan from rice straw

Abstract

The industrial sectors that produce synthetic chemicals and and polymers rely heavily on fossil resources. Rice straw is very abundant in Indonesia and can be used as a substitute for fossil resources to produce petrochemical precursors. It is known that cellulose component is the main source for LG formation. Due to high contain of cellulose, the potential of rice straw can be transform by pyrolysis to produce bio-oils and derivative products towards levoglucosan (LG) should be developed. Levoglucosan is an important intermediate compound as it can be convert to the precursor of bio-polymer adipic acid, bio-ethanol, etc. Nowadays it’s still rarely research focused on this mechanism route producing LG through pyrolysis. LG then can run into a further reaction and produce derivative products. In order to obtain the highest yield of LG in bio-oil, a condition that may inhibit the further reaction of LG during pyrolysis takes place. The factor of biomass source and composition, temperature, and holding time (adjusted by N2 feed) most likely greatly affect the product composition formed at the end of pyrolysis. In this study, fast-pyrolysis of rice straw was performed in fixed-bed reactor (5 grams of biomass) under different temperature ranges (450 to 600 °C), N2 flow rate (1200 to 1582 ml/min) to maximize the yield of LG. The content of LG on bio-oil was measured by GC-MS instrument. The maximum yield of LG (67.78% of area) was obtained at an optimal temperature of 500°C with holding time of 1.35 s.