Exploring the potential of biomass through pyrolysis screening

One part of this effort is led by Anthony Dufour at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), who oversees the project’s pyrolysis screening activities. 

What is your team currently working on, and why is pyrolysis screening important for LowCoBio? 

“One target in Work Package 1 is to optimise the pretreatment of biomasses to reduce the acidity of bio-oils and increase their overall value. Our team has just completed the screening of about 20 biomasses pretreated by VTT. The experiments were carried out at CNRS Nancy in a micro‑fluidized bed, which offers strong control of pyrolysis conditions, such as gas-phase residence time, sand temperature, and elutriation, ensuring high accuracy and reproducibility.” 

What key parameters are you analysing when comparing different feedstocks? 

“We have analysed the mass balances (bio‑oil + char + gas), the Total Acid Number of the bio-oils, water content, and gas composition. We are currently conducting additional analyses, including GC/MS‑FID (mass yields of main molecules, notably acetic acid) and NMR (functional groups in the bio-oils).” 

What do you hope to learn from the next analysis phase? 

“Based on this comprehensive set of bio-oil analyses, we will select the most effective pretreatment methods and pyrolyse both raw and pretreated biomasses at a larger scale in Nancy. These bio-oils will then be upgraded at VTT.”