Monday, May 2, 2011
Grand Ballroom C-D, 2nd fl (Sheraton Seattle)
Due to the present-day high demand for biodiesel, the glycerol availability has increased while its market price decreased substantially. That means that it can be a suitable feedstock for either chemical related industries or biofuels. The glycerol pyrolysis is a promising way to produce biofuels such as hydrogen and syngas (feedstock used in synthetic fuels production via Fisher-Tropsch reaction) and could be a suitable via to add value to this by-product from biodiesel and at same time avoiding its accumulation in the environment. As other pyrolysis processes, syngas production from glycerol pyrolysis depends on different process conditions and process technologies adopted. In this work, the glycerol pyrolysis was carried out in a fixed bed reactor filled with alumina oxide. The reaction temperature was varied in the range of 700-900°C, the reaction time from 10 to 50 min and flow rate of carrier gas from 0 to 60 ml/min. The process parameters as well as, syngas properties such as composition and heat value were evaluated. The experiments were carried out according to a 23 factorial design plus three central points. At last, a technical-economical analysis was carried out to examine the feasibility of syngas production from glycerol pyrolysis considering not only feedstock, catalyst and energy required costs but also the conventional procedures used nowadays to produce syngas such as water electrolysis and natural gas catalytic reform.