Self‐purging microwave pyrolysis

What is it about?

Oil palm shell (OPS) is widely available biomass from palm oil mill. Self‐purging microwave pyrolysis (SPMP) was performed to produce carbon‐rich biochar from OPS for the adsorption of methylene blue dye. The effect of feedstock amount on the pyrolysis temperature, yield and characteristic of the biochar were investigated.

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Why is it important?

We found that the amount of feedstock was directly proportional to the final pyrolysis temperature. The pyrolysis has reached a maximum final temperature of 760 °C when ≥ 300 g of OPS was loaded into the reactor without microwave absorbent. A heating rate of up to 105 oC/min was recorded, producing a yield of 40 wt% of biochar at a short processing time of 20 min. The biochar obtained at 700 °C showed a relatively low volatile matter (24 wt%), higher fixed carbon content (66 wt%), carbon (78.5 wt%), oxygen (17.7 wt%), highly porous structure with high BET surface area of 410 m2/g and pore volume of 0.16 cm3/g, which recorded a methylene blue dye adsorption efficiency of 20 mg/g.