Influence of phenethyl acetate and naphthalene addition before and after pyrolysis on the quantitative analysis of bio-oil

Abstract

The condensation-collection and quantitative analysis of bio-oil limit its component investigation and utilization. In order to find a convenient method for the analysis of bio-oil, the present study conducted an attempt for bio-oil quantitative analysis with the addition of internal standards before pyrolysis. Based on their good thermal stability, phenethyl acetate and naphthalene were selected as standards in the study and experiments were carried out to compare the effects of two added modes (adding into the biowaste before pyrolysis or adding into bio-oil after pyrolysis) on the bio-oil analysis. The results showed that both phenethyl acetate and naphthalene were mainly volatilized under testing conditions, which could be transferred into the oil with the volatile matters during biowaste pyrolysis. Through the co-pyrolysis experiments of the internal standards with lignin and cellulose, almost no interactions were found between the internal standards and such components. Furthermore, adding these standards before pyrolysis hardly affected the properties of noncondensable gas and biochar from the used biowaste samples (tobacco and sawdust waste). Compared with the bio-oil analysis results via traditional methods by adding standards into the bio-oil after pyrolysis, the results regarding the component distribution characteristics of the bio-oil were similar using the proposed method through the addition of standards before pyrolysis. Considering adequate mixing of the added standards (before pyrolysis) in the generated bio-oil, the proposed method could partly help to avoid inaccurate analysis of bio-oil components caused by incomplete collection of the pyrolytic volatiles.