(407b) Wheat Straw to Bio-Oil and Hydrogen Production From Aqueous Phase of Bio-Oil

Currently, a viable route towards hydrogen production from biomass—such as agricultural residues— has been developed through the process of catalytic steam reforming of aqueous fraction of biomass pyrolysis oil. This method consists of two stages: generating bio-oil from biomass via fast pyrolysis reaction in the first stage, and thereupon applying the catalytic steam reforming process on the aqueous phase of bio-oil in order to produce renewable hydrogen in the second stage. The overall goal of this study is to evaluate both stages of this method and consequently the conversion process of producing renewable hydrogen from biomass. In the first stage (pyrolysis process), wheat straw as biomass was converted into pyrolytic oil, char and gases in a fluidized bed reactor. Under the optimum conditions of pyrolysis temperature of about 500 ^oC and wheat straw particle size less than 0.6 mm, the maximum achieved bio-oil yielded over 50 wt%. Furthermore and in the second stage (catalytic steam reforming process), the aqueous phase of a commercial bio-oil as well as the aqueous phase of bio-oil produced in the first stage were converted to hydrogen in a catalytic fixed bed steam reformer. For the case of commercial bio-oil, the effects of three groups of home-made Nickel-Alumina based catalysts as well as operational conditions of the process were evaluated in terms of their yield for hydrogen production. The highest hydrogen yield of about 65 % was achieved over the most effective catalyst (Ru-Ni/Al₂O₃ with 14 wt% Ni) in the under the following optimum conditions: temperature of 850 ^oC and a space velocity (WbHSv) of 10 h^-1. For the case of aqueous homemade bio-oil, hydrogen was produced with the yield of about 60% over the same catalyst and under similar operational conditions.