Understanding the pyrolysis of CCA-treated wood: Part I. Effect of metal ions

✍ Scribed by Qirong Fu; Dimitris S. Argyropoulos; David C. Tilotta; Lucian A. Lucia

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 169 KB
• Volume: 81
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0165-2370
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jaap.2007.08.003

✦ Synopsis

The influence of several inorganic compounds (K 2 Cr 2 O 7 , CrO 3 and CuSO 4 ) on the pyrolysis of southern pine wood has been investigated. The wood powder was pre-treated with various inorganic compound solutions prior to the pyrolysis and the distribution and yields of the pyrolysis products were obtained by gas chromatography and quantitative 31 P nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) analyses. Our experiments showed that K 2 Cr 2 O 7 and CuSO 4 salts promoted the formation of levoglucosan (LG). In particular, the former providing higher LG yields up to 26.7%. The CrO 3 treatment induced the production of low tar and high char yields, with a very low yield of LG and high yield of levoglucosenone (LGO). The underlying reasoning behind these findings may be due to an acidic catalysis mechanism, which promotes cellulose depolymerization and dehydration processes. Due to acid-catalyzed lignin condensation reactions, the yield of lignin degradation products from the pyrolysis of pretreated wood was found to dramatically decrease in comparison to untreated wood.