ABSTRACT
Biomass is the abundantly available renewable and sustainable resource to produce fuels and value-added chemicals via thermo-chemical and biochemical approaches with net zero greenhouse gas emission. Feedstock pretreatment is an economic approach to produce bio-oil with high quality and yield, while reducing the downstream upgrading cost. Three pretreatment methods can be employed prior to pyrolysis: thermal pretreatment, physical pretreatment, and chemical pretreatment. Mechanical preprocessing aims to produce biomass feedstock with proper physical properties prior to fast pyrolysis. It is commonly employed in pilot plant scale or industrial scale. A multitude of parameters affect the pyrolysis behavior of biomass that leads to variation in bio-oil yield and its compositions. The choice of appropriate combination of pretreatment methods depends on the entire biomass and biofuel supply chains, economic benefits, and pyrolysis reactor configurations. The selection of suitable preprocessing and pretreatment methods could also benefit the production of other high-value chemicals along with pyrolytic bio-oil production.
