Effect of temperature on pyrolysis products from four nut shells

This article deals with slow pyrolysis of four shells such as hazelnut, walnut, almond and sunflower at the range of temperature 500-1200 K in a cylindrical reactor batch reactor. The aim of this work was to experimentally investigate how the temperature affects char, liquid and gaseous product yields from different shells via pyrolysis. The amount of char from pyrolysis of the shell samples decreases with increasing the pyrolysis temperature. The highest liquid yields were obtained from the samples between 650 and 800 K. The yield and the chemical composition of char can be calculated as functions of the pyrolysis temperature. The char components and higher heating values (HHVs) of shell fuels were correlated with pyrolysis temperatures. There were highly significant linear correlation between the pyrolysis temperature of the fuel and the fixed carbon content and HHV of char. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.