ABSTRACT
Biomass is the only sustainable, renewable, and environment-friendly source of organic carbon that we now obtain from fossil resources. Biomass can be converted to various fuels and chemicals by dierent biochemical and thermochemical processes. e conventional methods of conversion have several disadvantages of low energy eciency, poor heat transfer, low carbon utilization, etc. Increasing the eciency of biomass conversion to obtain more value-added hydrocarbons is a challenging task. In this regard, microwave energy can eciently be used for dierent biomass pretreatment and conversion processes with higher energy eciency compared to the conventional processes. e selective cleavage by molecular interactions would enable the complete organic content utilization thereby producing bulk/specialty chemicals/fuels. Microwave pyrolysis can be used for diversied feedstocks without any energy-intensive pretreatment steps like drying and crushing. Compared to conventional pyrolysis, microwave pyrolysis produces better-quality bio-oil, gas, and biochar. e chapter aims to provide an updated comprehensive review on the usage of microwave energy for the biomass pyrolysis.
