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Pyrolysis of empty fruit bunches (EFB) was performed in a fixed bed reactor equipped with liquid collecting system. Pyrolysis process was conducted by varying the terminal pyrolysis temperature from 300 to 500OC under heating rate of 10OC/min for at least 2 hours. Char yield was obtained highest at 300OC around 55.88 wt%, and started to decrease as temperature increase. The maximum yield of pyrolysis liquid was obtained around 54.75 wt% as pyrolysis temperature reach 450OC. For gas yield percentage, the yield gained as temperature was increased from 300 to 500OC, within the range between 8.44 to 19.32 wt%. The char obtained at 400OC has great potential as an alternative solid fuel, due to its high heating value of 23.37 MJ/kg, low in volatile matter and ash content which are approximately around 40.32 and 11.12 wt%, respectively. The collected pyrolysis liquid within this temperature range found to have high water content of around 16.15 to 18.20 wt%. The high aqueous fraction seemed to cause the pyrolysis liquid to have low HHV which only ranging from 10.81 to 12.94 MJ/kg. These trends of results showed that necessary enhancement should be employ either on the raw biomass or pyrolysis products in order to approach at least the minimum quality of common hydrocarbon solid or liquid fuel. For energy production, both produced biochar and pyrolysis liquid are considered as sustainable sources of bio-energy since they contained low amounts of nitrogen and sulphur, which are considered as environmental friendly solid and liquid fuel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The abundance of empty fruit bunches (EFB) from oil palm mill made them an economically attractive and viable source of energy nowadays. Converting pyrolyzed EFB into densified solid fuel (briquette) could overcome the troublesome of using raw material which has low energy density and lack of uniform properties for domestic and industrial energy utilization. In this work, EFB is pyrolyzed at 400°C under heating rate of 10°C/min for at least 2 hours to obtain char and pyrolysis liquid needed. Char is prepared as a main source for the briquette mixture, meanwhile the pyrolysis liquid acts as the binder. Both char and pyrolysis liquid were mixed at various percentage of concentrations; 90:10, 80:20, 70:30 and 60:40, and then manually compressed at 10MPa for at least 10 minutes. The results of the properties found that the proportion of 60:40 mixtures has the highest density value of approximately around 0.95 g/cm3, with largest weight loss of production up to 4.83%. The increased pyrolysis liquid added into the mixture has seemly lowered the energy value of the briquette from 23.13 to 21.23 MJ/kg. In the burning test determination, briquettes mixture of 70:30 was found to generate the highest temperature up to 483°C compared to others, and could retain a temperature of 100°C for at least 10 minutes after the flame was gradually put out by itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]