A novel biomass Microwave-Assisted pyrolysis system driven by solid oxide fuel Cell: Modeling and energy analysis

Microwave-assisted pyrolysis has been viewed as one of the most promising technologies for the biomass utilization, but some problems on the power consumption and gaseous product storage exist in the primary biomass processing. In this paper, a novel biomass microwave-assisted pyrolysis system driven by solid oxide fuel cell was proposed. An experimental system was established to obtain the distribution of product components for rice, wheat, maize straw and sawdust with different catalysts. The energy analysis using experimental data was performed through the microwave-assisted pyrolysis system modeling. Results indicate that, overall, the pyrolysis power consumption becomes lower at a higher pyrolysis temperature, due to the more carbon monoxide. The power generation capacity of biomass increases with the pyrolysis temperature, benefiting from a higher gas yield and larger mass fractions of combustible gases. The energy self-sufficiency ratio of sawdust is as high as 1.84, which is far higher than those of three straws (lower than 0.43), making the sawdust an ideal biomass. In the view of energy self-sufficiency ratio, the iron-carbon composite material and nickel oxide material are the optimal catalysts for straws, and the ferroferric oxide catalyst behaves best for sawdust through decreasing the pyrolysis power consumption drastically (＜1200 kJ/kg). This research provides a novel technical approach to supply the electricity for biomass microwave-assisted pyrolysis.