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Characterization of North American Lignocellulosic Biomass and Biochars in Terms of their Candidacy for Alternate Renewable Fuels Sonil Nanda & Pravakar Mohanty & Kamal K. Pant & Satyanarayan Naik & Janusz A. Kozinski & Ajay K. Dalai

Published online: 14 December 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2012

Abstract The use of lignocellulosic biomass as a renewable energy source is becoming progressively essential. Much attention is focused on identifying suitable biomass species that can provide high energy outputs to replace conventional fossil fuels. The current study emphasizes on some commonly available biomasses in North America such as pinewood, timothy grass, and wheat straw for their usage towards next generation biofuels. Fast pyrolysis of the feedstocks was performed at 450 °C to generate biochars that were further characterized to advocate their energy and agronomic relevance. The biomasses were examined physiochemically to understand their compositional and structural characteristics through analytical approaches such as CHNS (carbon–hydrogen–nitrogen–sulfur), ICP-MS (inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry), particle size, FTIR (Fourier transform infrared) and Raman spectroscopy, thermogravimetric and differential thermogravimetric, XRD (X-ray diffraction), and high-pressure liquid chromatography. The chemical composition of feedstocks significantly differed from that of biochars and the variations among feedstock composition were also found to be greater than S. Nanda : J. A. Kozinski Lassonde School of Engineering, York University, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada P. Mohanty : A. K. Dalai (*) Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan S7N 5A9, Canada e-mail: [email protected] P. Mohanty : K. K. Pant Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi 110 016, India S. Naik Centre for Rural Development and Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi 110 016, India

for biochars. The presence of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin along with other organic components were identified in the spectroscopic and chromatographic analysis. The FTIR spectra of biochars showed removal of oxygen- and hydrogen-containing functionalities from feedstocks due to pyrolysis at higher temperature, although retaining certain significant cellulose-derived functionalities. A number of crystallographic phases in the XRD of biomass, ash, and biochars were due to minerals commonly Na, Mg, Al, Ca, Fe, and Mn. ICP-MS of biochars demonstrated substantial amount of alkali elements indicating their compatibility towards soil amendment for restoring degraded soils. Keywords Lignocellulosic biomass . Biochar . Characterization . Biofuel potential

Introduction The climate change and diminishing oil supplies are issues of acute concern for most countries in the world today. The global use of petroleum and other liquid fuels was 85.7 million barrels per day in 2008; however, the consumption is assumed to escalate to 97.6 million ba