Evaluating the susceptibility of pyrolysis of monosaccharide, disaccharide, and polysaccharide to CO₂

This study is aiming at exploring the genuine role of CO₂ in pyrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass by investigating the susceptibility of pyrolysis of monosaccharide (e.g., xylose and glucose), disaccharide (e.g., sucrose), and polysaccharide (e.g., woody biomass) to CO₂. To do this, the thermal degradation of these four biomass samples was characterized in N₂ and CO₂. The thermal characterization results reveal that the physical aspects of biomass decomposition (i.e., thermal degradation rate and residual mass difference) associated with CO₂ were nearly the same; however, the chemical aspects were significantly different. In other words, CO₂ enhanced thermal cracking of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) generated from thermal degradation of biomass. In addition, our experiment results show that xylose (a major constituent of hemicellulose) and lignin exhibited a high sensitivity to CO₂ in pyrolysis. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd.