An Aspen Plus® tool for simulation of lignocellulosic biomass pyrolysis via equilibrium and ranking of the main process variables

Pyrolysis of non-fossil fuels is raising a growing interest in the nowadays scenario for the alternative supply of energy, fuels and chemicals. Biomass is among the most widely available and technologically promising candidate feedstocks. For simulation purposes and process design goals, kinetic-based models promise to be quite accurate in literature; however, they are computationally intensive and, more importantly, applicable only when kinetic data are available for the specific feedstock and pyrolysis equipment. Here, a different modeling approach is followed by considering that the pyrolysis reactor is under the thermodynamic equilibrium; then, the authors take advantage of the capabilities provided by the Aspen Plus® software. Therefore, this work is focused on the development of an input-output reactor model to simulate pyrolysis of a lignocellulosic biomass and to predict the effects of the main process variables. The trends of the predicted results as a function of the process operating variables are generally in accordance with those that are experimentally evident and published in literature. A limited comparison is provided against the experimental results of Honus [25]. It has to be noted that the Aspen code could not predict the composition of the liquid residue, i.e., tar.