Proceedings

The oil produced from the pyrolysis of biosolids needs to undergo expensive denitrogenation route due to the presence of higher amount of nitrogenated compounds. The current work systematically investigated the effect of several natural catalysts such as lime, biochar and activated char for minimizing the formation of nitrogenated compounds in the oil. The experiments were conducted in a bench-scale bubbling fluidized bed reactor at 500, 700 and 900 ^oC. The maximum oil yield of 48.9 wt% (daf) was achieved in the presence of biochar catalysts at a pyrolysis temperature of 700 ^oC. However, N yield in the oil was found to be the lowest (<10%) in the presence of activated char at 900 ^oC. NH₃ was found to be the predominant nitrogenous gas under all the conditions, and its yield increased with increasing pyrolysis temperature. Highest NH₃ production was observed in the case of activated char at 700 ^oC.