I had short but rich experience in KTH, Sweden with Prof. Yang’s group. I did plastics pyrolysis for my PhD study, and will do some research on catalytic pyrolysis of biomass for postdoc.
This visit provided me an opportunity to basic understand and run relative experiment on gas and liquid oil production analysis from catalytic pyrolysis of lignin with a one-stage fixed reactor. The objectives of this study visit are:
- To study gas production from lignin pyrolysis with three different membrane catalysts;
- To study liquid oil production lignin pyrolysis with three different membrane catalysts;
- compare the production of lignin pyrolysis with and without catalysts.
After experiment and analysis, the achievement is:
- Lignin moisture had been worked out;
- Gas study for lignin pyrolysis with and without catalysts has been done by on-line GC;
- Liquid oil analysis of lignin pyrolysis with and without catalysts has been done by GC-MS.
In addition, apart from experiments, we also had a group meeting and I did a 10 mins presentation about my current and future research. I also knew better about their research areas and discuss some new research ideas through this meeting.
I surprised about their factory style lab and detailed designed facilities. This visit not only gave me better understanding on research work, but also some new ideas and tips on experiments and reactor design. For example, firstly their one stage reactor, actually could be used as a two-stage reactor when you use the same temperature for the feedstock and catalysts due to their smart cooling and piston design on the top of reactor. And also, I normally bought expensive filter which was used for gas purified before GC analysis online. And I learned chemical ‘phosphorus pentoxide’ could be used as self-made filter and could be changed after several times usage. A lot of small but small stuff was worth to learn, such as gas blocker.
I really enjoy this academic visit trip. I knew difference research environments in Sweden, and meet lots of friendly and helpful colleges.
Running an experiment on the downdraft fixed bed gasifier
overall lab in KTH
one-stage fixed pyrolysis reactor
one of the oil production of my experiment
