Loading…

Revealing the chemistry of biomass pyrolysis by means of tunable synchrotron photoionisation-mass spectrometry

"Imaging" biomass conversion: pyrolysis is the first reaction involved in all thermal processes for biofuels and green chemicals production. Synchrotron light ionisation and mass spectrometry is used for the first time to investigate biomass pyrolysis. The soft and tunable ionisation sourc...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:RSC advances 2013-01, Vol.3 (14), p.4786-4792
Main Authors: Dufour, Anthony, Weng, Junjie, Jia, Liangyuan, Tang, Xiaofeng, Sirjean, Baptiste, Fournet, René, Gall, Hervé Le, Brosse, Nicolas, Billaud, Francis, Mauviel, Guillain, Qi, Fei
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:"Imaging" biomass conversion: pyrolysis is the first reaction involved in all thermal processes for biofuels and green chemicals production. Synchrotron light ionisation and mass spectrometry is used for the first time to investigate biomass pyrolysis. The soft and tunable ionisation source coupled with ab initiocalculations reveals chemical mechanisms and new major intermediate species. This methodology could be extended to the thermal and catalytic conversion of all other materials. Primary volatile products are analysed online as a function of photon energy, biomass composition (cellulose, xylan, lignin), reactor temperature and time of conversion. Hydroxyacetaldehyde was detected at very minor yields for cellulose pyrolysis confirming that it is a secondary product. The effect of cellulose structure and ash content on primary tar formation was also studied. The mechanism of levoglucosan dissociative photoionisation is depicted. A new major intermediate product which could be a precursor of furanone-based species from cellulose is evidenced thanks to the soft ionisation and MSMS structural analysis of ions. Different lignin markers and evolutions upon time of conversion are shown for miscanthus and oak pyrolysis.
ISSN:2046-2069
2046-2069
DOI:10.1039/c3ra40486b