Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Towards an eco-social circular economy: exploring the feasibility study of pyrolysis on agricultural feedstocks

Allison, Thomas; Shivaprasad, Kumar Vijayalakshmi; Malik, Abdullah; Rafiq, Rehman; Wang, Yaodong; Roskilly, Anthony Paul

Towards an eco-social circular economy: exploring the feasibility study of pyrolysis on agricultural feedstocks Thumbnail


Authors

Thomas Allison thomas.j.allison@durham.ac.uk
PGR Student Doctor of Philosophy

Rehman Rafiq

Anthony Paul Roskilly



Abstract

The agricultural sector is challenging to decarbonise due to its reliance on heavy machinery and fossil fuels, which face issues when decarbonising via methods such as electrification. However, agriculture provides opportunities to generate renewable energy via biomass sources due to their abundance within this sector. This feasibility study used a continuous auger pyrolysis system to assess how straw waste from a medium-scale arable farm could convert energy from an external electrical source into usable chemical potential. Wheat, barley, oil seed rape (OSR), and bean straw have all been processed and pyrolysed under different temperatures and auger feed rates. The syngas product was then analysed, considering its composition and the lower heating value. Results indicate that the percentage of carbon monoxide and hydrogen and the total volume of syngas increased with temperature. In addition, the syngas’ energy quantity increased despite the product’s decreasing heating value. The case study’s annual energy demand was equal to 14.4% of the 3900 GJ maximum potential contained within the syngas, and thus it can be concluded that there is potential for the application of this system towards a circular economy. The system’s cold gas, net, and electrical conversion efficiency were also assessed with maximum values of 37.1%, 30.1%, and 174.4%, respectively. Furthermore, the statistical analysis confirms high predictability for wheat, barley, bean, and OSR feedstocks, with a general linear model showing high accuracy across all.

Citation

Allison, T., Shivaprasad, K. V., Malik, A., Rafiq, R., Wang, Y., & Roskilly, A. P. (online). Towards an eco-social circular economy: exploring the feasibility study of pyrolysis on agricultural feedstocks. Biomass Conversion and Biorefinery, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-024-06361-z

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Nov 17, 2024
Online Publication Date Dec 6, 2024
Deposit Date Jan 8, 2025
Publicly Available Date Jan 8, 2025
Journal Biomass Conversion and Biorefinery
Print ISSN 2190-6815
Electronic ISSN 2190-6823
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-024-06361-z
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3327577

Files

Published Journal Article (Advance Online Version)  (1.9 Mb)
PDF

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.





You might also like



Downloadable Citations