MICROWAVE-ASSISTED PYROLYSIS OF MORINGA OLEIFERA SEEDS FOR BIO-OIL PRODUCTION

• Main Author: KOKILAHVANI, SOMASUNDARAM
• Format: Final Year Project Report
• Language: English; English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, (UNIMAS) 2018
• Subjects: TP Chemical technology
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/34253/1/MICROWAVE-ASSISTED%20PYROLYSIS%20OF%20MORINGA24pgs.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/34253/4/MICROWAVE-ASSISTED%20PYROLYSIS%20OF%20MORINGAft.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/34253/
• Institution: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak

Nowadays, the environmental impacts of burning fossil fuels have led to a demand for an alternative solution of fossil fuel. Bio-oil is a suitable source of energy that environmentally friendly and is a sustainable resource. Bio-oil produced through pyrolysis can be used for the power generation as well as chemicals and biofuels production. Pyrolysis process is a thermochemical process during in which the biomass feedstock is heated in an inert atmosphere to produce gas, bio-oil (liquid) and char (solid) as products. Microwave heating is a technique that allows rapid heating due its volumetric and selective heating nature and this can preserve the product quality by limiting secondary reactions which is present if heated conventionally. Moringa oleifera seeds is chosen as the raw material biomass for this study as it is available abundantly in tropical countries and has high content of oil in the seed that could be synthesised as bio-oil. Microwave-assisted pyrolysis is the chosen method for the process as it utilises microwave heating where the heating occurs through the interaction of biomass with the electric field component of an electromagnetic wave. The synthesised bio-oil is then characterized using four different types of characterization machines which are Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) which is to identify functional group, Bomb Calorimeter which is used to calculate the calorific or heating value. A UV-Visible Spectrometer (UV-VIS) is also used to quantify the total phenolic content (TPC) present in the bio-oil produced. These tests are done in order research the quality of the bio-oil produced from Moringa seeds using microwave-assisted pyrolysis.