Experimental Study of Thermal Pyrolysis of Avocado Seed for Liquid Fuel Production

Abstract

Bio-waste which is available in large quantities worldwide is rich in biodegradable organic matter. By utilizing from bio-waste as feedstocks to attain valuable bio-based products, resource and waste problems will be solved as being “double green”. The bio-waste utilization aids decrease pollution while providing renewable energy and bio-based chemicals for the upcoming utilizations. Consequently, bio-waste resource utilization has involved growing attention in scientific and industrial societies. The characteristic of avocado seed as a bio-waste was analysed using elemental analysis resulted as 39.89% C, 5.43% H, 0.43% N, 45.2% O content. The higher heating value was calculated using Dulong Formula as 13.70 MJ/kg. The raw milled bio-waste was characterized by FT-IR containing the wavenumbers in the range of 4000-400 cm-1. The spectra bands for bio-waste demonstrated characteristic peaks of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. The mean moisture and ash contents of the “as-received” avocado seeds employed in this study were 6.54 wt% and 2.42 wt.%, respectively. Pyrolysis of avocado seed was carried out in a Heinze reactor at 500°C with a heating rate of 10°C/min and retention time of 20 min. The pyrolysis experiment yielded the liquid product (32%), solid product “char” (34%) and non-condensable gas (34%) with biomass conversion of 67%. Based on the results, it was confirmed that avocado seed can be utilized as a potential bio-waste according to pyrolysis results but liquid properties as a bio-fuel oil and solid product char properties as an activated carbon should be evaluated in detail.