The York Research Database

Biomass can be seen as the oil well of the future; a renewable and widely distributed resource that should be increasingly exploited for the production of energy products with environmental, economic and social benefits [1]. One method by which the bio-energy carriers and chemicals can be obtained is pyrolysis. The latter is a feedstock agnostic technique capable of deconstructing biopolymers into more useful gas, oil, chemical and char products. Microwave irradiation can interact with different types of biomass at low temperatures compared to conventional flash pyrolysis. Building on our original work in microwave pyrolysis and biorefining ([2], [3], [4]), studies are now underway dealing with ligno-cellulosic compounds and whole biomasses, mechanistic & process conditions, product analysis and scale-up. The prime aims of the work are to make economically viable routes to chemicals and bio-energy through microwave processing of biomass.