Bioresource Technology 277 (2019) 46–54 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Bioresource Technology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biortech Thermal characteristics and product formation mechanism during pyrolysis of penicillin fermentation residue T ⁎ Zhiqiang Wanga,b,c, Chen Honga,b, , Yi Xinga,b,c, Zaixing Lic, Yifei Lia,b, Jian Yanga,b, Lihui Fenga,b, Jiashuo Hua,b, Haipeng Sund a Department of Environmental Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China Beijing Key Laboratory of Resource-oriented Treatment of Industrial Pollutants, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China c Department of Environmental Engineering, Hebei University of Science and Technology, Shijiazhuang 050018, China d China Certification Centre for Automotive Products Co., Ltd., Beijing 100044, China b G R A P H I C A L A B S T R A C T A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T Keywords: Penicillin fermentation residue Pyrolysis characteristics Kinetics Bio-oil GC-MS analysis This work studied thermal characteristics and product formation mechanism during pyrolysis of penicillin fermentation residue (PR). Results showed that PR pyrolysis proceeded in four stages. The kinetic triplet of each stage was calculated using Flynn-Wall-Ozawa, Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose, and integral master-plot methods. The kinetic model for stage 1 was the three-dimensional diffusion model, the simple reaction order model for stage 2 and stage 4, and the nucleation-growth model for stage 3. FTIR analysis suggested that the intensities of absorption peaks of NeH, C]O, CeH, CeN, and CeO in chars weakened gradually with increasing temperature, corresponding to the production of CH4, CO, NH3, and HCN. GC-MS results indicated that the high protein content in PR resulted in a high fraction of nitrogenated compounds (amides and amines, nitriles, and N-heterocyclic species) in bio-oil. The formation mechanism of these compounds was discussed. Besides, bio-oil also contained large quantities of oxygenated compounds and a few hydrocarbons. 1. Introduction Increasing energy demands motivate the development of new alternative energy because the use of fossil energy resources exhausts ⁎ finite reserves and causes severe environmental problems such as global warming and climate change (Dhyani and Bhaskar, 2018; Yuan et al., 2015). Biomass, which includes municipal and industrial wastes as well as lignocellulosic and aquatic feedstocks, is a promising renewable Corresponding author at: Department of Environmental Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China. E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Hong). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2019.01.030 Received 26 November 2018; Received in revised form 7 January 2019; Accepted 8 January 2019 Available online 09 January 2019 0960-8524/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Bioresource Technology 277 (2019) 46–54 Z. Wang et al. integral master-plot methods. The compositions of evolved gas and the surface chemical structures of raw PR and char samples at different temperatures were detected using FTIR spectrometer. The bio-oil compositions were identified by GC-MS and the formation mechanism of N-containing compounds in bio-oil were discussed in depth. energy source. It can be converted into energy and fuel via a thermochemical conversion process. Pyrolysis is one of the most researched thermochemical methods, and the process results in the conversion of solid biomass to bio-oil which can be used in existing equipment such as boilers or can be upgraded to produce liquid transportation fuels. Many authors have conducted research on the distribution and formation mechanism of products during lignocellulosic biomass pyrolysis (Krishna et al., 2016; Mafu et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2018b). However, several techno-economic studies showed that lignocellulosic biomass can only provide 30% of the world’s energy requirements (Maddi et al., 2017). Aquatic biomass such as algae can be cultivated on non-arable land without competing with food crops and can be grown quickly (Hu et al., 2017). The yield estimates of bio-oil from algae are higher than those from any other biomass, but technical, economical, and logistical problems must be settled before there is large-scale production of liquid fuels (Georgianna and Mayfield, 2012; Maddi et al., 2017). Thus, more attention has shifted to municipal and industrial wastes containing large quantities of organics. To date, most of the work has focused on sludge pyrolysis (Alvarez et al., 2016; Fang et al., 2016; Lin et al., 2018; Magdziarz and Werle, 2014). These studies indicated that the organic matter in sludge at about 473 K begins to decompose to form volatiles and chars through various bond-breaking and -forming reactions. After cooling, the volatiles spilling out of the pyrolysis reactor condense to form bio-oil. However, the composition of bio-oil reported in the literature varies greatly, resulting in different characteristics of sludge pyrolysis oil between studies. This is because sludge pyrolysis involves numerous complex reaction pathways, and many factors such as the temperature, residue time, and sludge composition may affect this process and thus the distribution and characteristics of pyrolytic products (Fonts et al., 2012; Syed-Hassan et al., 2017). The antibiotic residue studied in the present work originates from the antibiotics production process and is generated continuously from existing industries. It has been included in the China Hazardous Waste List since 2008 because the residual antibiotics may threaten human health through pollution of water and soil (Cai et al., 2017). Dried antibiotic residue with high organic content has the potential to produce bio-oil via pyrolysis, and can be regarded as a special source of bioenergy. The thermal behavior of antibiotic residue is different from that of other organic wastes due to the different physicochemical characteristics, but little research has been done. Meanwhile, this information can also provide a theoretical guideline to design and optimize manufacturing process of bio-oil from PR. Bio-oil has been considered as a promising solution to the issues of greenhouse gas emission and energy security. For commercial utilization of bio-oil, its potential environmental impacts and sustainability aspects need to be evaluated by some methods such as life cycle assessment (LCA) (Liu et al., 2018). A systematic study on the properties of pyrolysis products not only contributes to further understand the pyrolysis mechanism, but also provides basis data for LCA of bio-oil. For example, analyzing the properties of gas and solid products is helpful to improve the yield and quality of bio-oil; determining the bio-oil compositions provide a significant guidance for reducing the discharge of pollutants from the biooil combustion. It is noted that antibiotic residue shows a higher nitrogen content of up to 10 wt% which is far greater than the content in other organic wastes such as sludge (Yang et al., 2015). Nitrogen element in antibiotic residue exists primarily as protein-N which can be transformed into various N-containing compounds in pyrolytic oil whose subsequent use will cause the secondary pollution (Zhu et al., 2016). Thus, understanding the distribution and formation mechanism of nitrogen in bio-oil is very essential to obtain high quality liquid fuels, which will lay the foundation for the use of bio-oil as a transportation fuel. However, all the information is not available. In this work, the pyrolysis characteristics of penicillin fermentation residue (PR) were studied using a thermogravimetric analyzer and the kinetic triplet of this process was calculated via the FWO, KAS and 2. Materials and methods 2.1. Materials In this study, the tested antibiotic residue was from the penicillin production process in a pharmaceutical factory in Hebei Province, China. The penicillin fermentation residue is denoted as PR. After being dried to constant weight in an oven at 105 °C, the PR samples were ground and filtered through a 100-mesh sieve for further analysis. The contents of crude protein, crude lipid, and carbohydrate in PR were measured according to GB 5009.5–2010, GB/T 5009.6–2003, and NY/T 1676–2008, respectively. The ultimate analysis for C, H, N and S content was carried out using a Vario EL cube analyzer (Elementar, Germany). The proximate analysis was performed using a TGA2000 analyzer (Navas, America). The higher heating value (HHV) were calculated using the Dulong formula (Yu et al., 2011): HHV(MJ/kg) = 0.3383 C+ 1.422(H - O/8) (1) where C, H, and O are the mass percentages of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen in PR, respectively. From the above analysis, contents of crude protein, crude lipid, carbohydrate, and others were 45.4 wt%, 3.85 wt %, 1.66 wt%, and 49.09 wt%, respectively. The proximate analysis and ultimate analysis on a dry basis were as follows: 82.62 wt% volatile matters, 9.34 wt% fixed carbon, 8.04 wt% ash, 44.88 wt% C, 6.27 wt% H, 5.93 wt% N, 0.77 wt% S, and 34.12 wt% O (calculated by difference). The HHV of PR was 18.03 MJ/kg. 2.2. Experimental methods 2.2.1. Pyrolysis characteristics The thermogravimetric analysis experiments were conducted on a NETZSCH STA 449 F3 thermogravimetric analyzer (NETZSCH, Germany) with a sensitivity of 10−7 g. To reduce the heat and mass transfer limitations between solid particles, the initial weight of samples was kept at about 6 mg. The PR samples were heated up from room temperature to 1300 K at heating rates of 10 K/min, 20 K/min, and 30 K/min. High purity argon (Ar) was used as the carrier gas with a flow rate of 100 mL/min. Each run was repeated at least three times under the same conditions to decrease experimental error. The initial decomposition temperature (Ti, K), terminal decomposition temperature (Tf, K), and peak temperature (Tpeak, K) were directly obtained from the thermogravimetry (TG) and differential thermogravimetry (DTG) curves according to previously described methods (Fang et al., 2016). In addition, the comprehensive devolatilization index D was used to assess the pyrolysis performance of PR (Chen et al., 2015), which could be calculated by Eq. (2): D= (−DTGmax ) × (−DTGmean ) Ti × Tpeak × ΔT1/2 (2) where −DTGmax is the maximum weight loss rate, %/min; −DTGmean is the mean weight loss rate, %/min; ΔT1/2 is the temperature range of (−DTGmax)/(−DTGmean) = 0.5 (half-peak width) (Fang et al., 2016). For the thermal decomposition composed of multiple stages, Eq. (2) could be rewritten into Eq. (3): D= ∑ ΔWi × Di i (3) where ΔWi is the weight loss percentage of each stage in the total 47 Bioresource Technology 277 (2019) 46–54 Z. Wang et al. β AR E ln ⎛ 2 ⎞ = ln (KAS ) − EG (α ) RT ⎝T ⎠ weight loss (%); Di is the index D of each stage. The higher index D represents the better pyrolysis performance. The range of α is 0.2–0.8 with a step of 0.05. For α = const, E values can be obtained from the slopes of the regression lines by plotting ln β vs. 1/T and ln (β/T2) vs. 1/T. 2.2.2. Properties of pyrolysis products The pyrolysis experiments were performed in a fixed-bed tube furnace. 10 g PR samples were loaded into the reactor and pyrolyzed for 3 h at 600 K, 700 K, 800 K, 900 K and 1000 K, respectively, with the heating rate of 10 K/min. The evolved gas was swept by high-purity argon at a flow rate of 500 mL/min. The condensable fraction was trapped by acetone to obtain the oil phase, whereas the non-condensable gas products was online analyzed by a Nicolet iS50 FTIR Spectrometer (Thermal Fisher Scientific, USA). The oil phase was evaporated at 333 K under reduced pressure using a rotary evaporator to remove acetone, resulting in biooil products. The residual solids after PR pyrolysis were denoted as chars, and also examined using FTIR spectrometer over the wavelength range of 4000–400 cm−1 at the resolution of better than 0.09 cm−1. Two or three replicates were conducted for each pyrolysis experiment to confirm the repeatability of results. The chemical compositions of bio-oil were analyzed using an Agilent 6890 N model Gas Chromatography–5973 model Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) equipped with a HP-5 capillary column (5% phenyl 95% dimethylpolysiloxane, 30 m × 0.25 mm × 0.25 μm). The bio-oil was diluted with chromatographic grade acetone, and then the mixture was filtered through a 0.45 μm filter to remove all particulates. 1 μL of prepared sample was injected into the instrument with a split ratio of 30:1. The GC oven temperature program was as follows: started at 323 K (held 5 min); raised to 573 K at a rate of 4 K/min (held 5 min). The compounds in the samples were identified by comparison of their mass spectra with the NIST Database. 2.3.2. Determining the most probable mechanism function G(α) Integral master-plot method was employed to determine G(α) of each pyrolysis stage by comparing the shapes of theoretical masterplots and experimental master-plots (Chen et al., 2015). Since the decomposition rate of PR is quite slow at room temperature T0, Eq. (6) can be approximated as: G (α ) = P (uα ) = G (0.5) = dα = f (α ) A E AE ⎞ dT = exp ⎛− P (uα ) β βR ⎝ RT ⎠ (9) (10) AE P (u 0.5) βR (11) (12) The 15 common kinetic mechanism functions G(α) are shown in Table 1 (Vyazovkin et al., 2014). A series of theoretical master-plots can be obtained by plotting G(α)/G(0.5) vs. α, whereas experimental master-plots were obtained by plotting P(uα)/P(u0.5) vs. α. By comparing the deviation between the two kinds of curves, the most probable mechanism functions G(α) of various stages for PR pyrolysis can be determined. 3. Results and discussion (5) 3.1. Pyrolysis characteristics of PR ∫T T 0 A E ⎞ dT exp ⎛− β ⎝ RT ⎠ The TG and DTG curves of PR pyrolysis at different heating rates are shown in Fig. 1. DTG curves contain four peaks, indicating that the thermal decomposition process of PR can be divided into four stages. In the first stage, water evaporated and light organic volatiles decomposed at a low-temperature interval from room temperature to 440.0 K with a weight loss of 4.0 wt%. The second stage which extended from 440.0 K to 720.0 K with a weight loss of up to 40.0 wt% is the main stage of PR pyrolysis. Most of the organics such as protein, carbohydrate and aliphatic compounds decomposed in this stage. The maximum weight loss rate of approximately 3.0 wt%/min was reached at 595.6 K. Stage 3 was from 720.0 K to 840.0 K with a weight loss of about 9.0 wt%. In this stage, the residual organics with strong chemical bonds in PR continued to decompose. In the meantime, secondary reactions such as repolymerization and condensation also occurred in this stage and formed chars (Syed-Hassan et al., 2017). Stage 4 was from 840.0 K to 1100.0 K with a weight loss of about 8.0 wt%, corresponding to the decomposition stage of inorganic salts such as carbonate. As the heating rate (6) where G(α) is the integral form of mechanism function f(α); T0 is the initial temperature of pyrolysis reaction. 2.3.1. Calculating the activation energy E The PR pyrolysis experiments were conducted at 10, 20 and 30 K/ min. To make the best of TG data at different heating rates, Flynn-WallOzawa (FWO) method and Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose (KAS) method were used to calculate E values, and the corresponding expressions are as follows (Vyazovkin et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2018a): lnβ = ln T exp(−uα ) uα × (1.00198882uα + 1.87391198) G (α ) P (uα ) = G (0.5) P (u 0.5) where m0, mt and mf are is the initial weight, weight at time t and final weight of sample at each stage, respectively, mg. Eq. (6) is obtained by integrating Eq. (4): α ∫0 Then dividing Eq. (9) by Eq. (11) to obtain the integral master-plot equation: (4) m 0 − mt m 0 − mf ∫0 A E ⎞ dT ≈ exp ⎛− β ⎝ RT ⎠ For a single-step reaction, the kinetic triple (f(α), E and A) is constant. Based on the previously obtained E values, a proper mechanism function can be found to simulate TG data. The specific method is as follows: Selecting α = 0.5 as a reference, Eq. (9) can be expressed as: where α is the conversion degree; f(α) is the differential mechanism function; A is the pre-exponential factor, min−1; β is the constant heating rate, K/min; E is the activation energy, kJ/mol; R is the universal gas constant, 8.314 J/(mol·K); T is the absolute temperature, K. The conversion degree α of pyrolysis materials is defined as (Peng et al., 2017): G (α ) = T where uα = E/RTα, E is the average value of activation energy obtained by FWO and KAS methods, Tα is the corresponding temperature at a given α; P(uα) is the temperature integral. In our study, Tang-Liu-Zhang-Wang-Wang approximate expression was selected to solve P(uα) (Chen et al., 2015): The pyrolysis of solid fuel usually belongs to heterogeneous reaction system and proceeds under non-isothermal conditions. The pyrolysis kinetic equation can generally be described as (Peng et al., 2017): α= ∫T 0 2.3. Kinetic analysis dα A E ⎞ dT = exp ⎛− f (α ) β ⎝ RT ⎠ (8) 0.0048AE E − 1.0516 (FWO) RG (α ) RT (7) 48 Bioresource Technology 277 (2019) 46–54 Z. Wang et al. and 1.25 × 10−6 %2/(K3·min2) at 10, 20, 30 K/min, respectively. This result shows that the pyrolysis performance of PR can be improved by increasing the heating rate. Table 1 Most commonly used mechanism functions for the solid-state reactions. Symbol Reaction O1 O2 O3 Mechanism order First-order, n = 1 Second-order, n = 2 Third-order, n = 3 Power law P2 n = 1/2 P3 n = 1/3 P4 n = 1/4 Random nucleation and growth A1.5 Avrami-Erofeev equation (n = 2/3) A2 Avrami-Erofeev equation (n = 1/2) A3 Avrami-Erofeev equation (n = 1/3) Phase boundary reaction R2 Shrink cylindrical model (n = 1/2) R3 Shrink spherical model (n = 1/3) Diffusion D1 One-way transport D2 Two-way transport (Valensi equation) D3 Three-way transport (Jander equation) D4 Three-way transport (G-B equation) G(α) f(α) -ln(1-α) (1-α)−1-1 [(1-α)−2-1]/2 1-α (1-α)2 (1-α)3 α1/2 α1/3 α1/4 2α1/2 3α2/3 4α3/4 3.2. Kinetic analysis [-ln(1-α)]2/3 3.2.1. Calculating the activation energy According to Eqs. (7) and (8), a linear regression analysis was performed on the TG data obtained at different heating rates via the least square method (Figs. S1 and S2, Supplementary data). The slope of the FWO method was −1.0516 E/R and the slope of the KAS method was -E/R. The activation energies E of each stage at various conversion rates were estimated from the slope of the regression lines. Results indicated that the correlation coefficients R2 of all fitting curves exceeded 0.99 and the E values determined using the FWO and KAS methods were basically identical (Table S1, Supplementary data), which suggests that the calculation results were accurate and reliable. The E values calculated using the two methods for stage 1 of the PR pyrolysis were 87.10 kJ/mol and 84.92 kJ/mol, respectively. For stage 2, the E values were 168.85 kJ/mol and 166.90 kJ/mol, respectively. For stage 3, the E values were 202.97 kJ/mol and 200.61 kJ/mol, respectively. For stage 4, the E values were 310.23 kJ/mol and 309.70 kJ/ mol, respectively. The order of the activation energy for various stages was stage 1 < stage 2 < stage 3 < stage 4, which was related to the percentage and the bond energy of activated molecules during PR pyrolysis (Gai et al., 2013). In other words, the organics are more difficult to be decomposed, the reactions would occur at higher temperatures with a higher activation energy. This result is consistent with the TG-DTG analysis in Section 3.1. 1.5(1-α)[-ln(1-α)]1/ 3 [-ln(1-α)]1/2 2(1-α)[-ln(1-α)]1/2 [-ln(1-α)]1/3 3(1-α)[-ln(1-α)]2/3 1-(1-α)1/2 2(1-α)1/2 1-(1-α)1/3 3(1-α)2/3 1/2α α+(1-α)ln(1-α) α2 [-ln(1-α)] [1-(1-α)1/3]2 1.5(1-α)2/3[1-(1α)1/3] −1 1.5[(1-α) −1/3-1] −1 1-2α/3-(1-α)2/3 −1 3.2.2. Determining the most probable mechanism function The average E values for stages 1, 2, 3 and 4 obtained using the two above mentioned methods were 86.01, 167.87, 201.79, and 309.86 kJ/ mol (Table 4), respectively, which were used in the integral masterplots method. For a given α, the temperature integral P(uα) can be determined according to Eq. (10). The experimental master-plots of P(uα)/ P(u0.5) vs. α for various stages of PR pyrolysis are shown in Fig. 2(a-d). It is observed that the experimental master-plots at various heating rates are almost identical, which indicates that each stage of PR pyrolysis can be described by a single kinetic model. The experimental master-plots at a heating rate of 10 K/min were compared with the theoretical master-plots, as shown in Fig. 2(e–f). The experimental master-plot of stage 1 was almost identical to the theoretical masterplot D4. D4 was a three-dimensional diffusion model, and the corresponding mechanism function was G(α) = 1-2α/3-(1-α)2/3. The experimental master-plots of stage 2 and stage 4 were located between the theoretical master-plots F1 and F2. Fn was a simple reaction order model, and the corresponding mechanism function was G(α) = [(1–α)1−n-1]/(n-1). The experimental master-plot of stage 3 increased, the TG and DTG curves shifted toward higher temperatures due to the heat and mass transfer limitations. The pyrolysis characteristic parameters and the comprehensive devolatilization index D for PR are listed in Tables 2 and 3, respectively. As shown in Table 2, Ti, Tpeak, and Tf obviously shifted to higher temperatures with increasing heating rate. When the heating rate increased from 10 K/min to 30 K/min, the maximum weight loss rates (−DTGmax) in stages 1, 2, 3, and 4 increased from 0.52, 2.89, 1.19, and 0.60 wt %/min to 1.45, 9.68, 3.74, and 1.77 wt%/min, respectively. This increase might be attributed to the poor thermal conductivity of PR samples, which resulted in large temperature difference between the inside and the surface of the sample particles as the heating rate increased (Chen et al., 2015). The rapid heat transfer in the sample particles accelerated the release of volatiles. The heating rate had a slight effect on the residual weight (Wr) after PR pyrolysis. From Table 3, it is observed that the index D of each stage for PR pyrolysis increased dramatically as the heating rate increased. The values of index D of the whole pyrolysis process were 1.39 × 10−7, 5.40 × 10−7, Fig. 1. TG and DTG curves of PR pyrolysis at different heating rates. 49 Bioresource Technology 277 (2019) 46–54 Z. Wang et al. Table 2 Pyrolysis characteristic parameters of PR under different heating rates. β Ti a Tpeak1 K/min 10 20 30 K 376.7 390.5 401.2 K 411.7 424.4 425.8 a b c d e −DTGmax1 b %/min 0.52 1.05 1.45 c Tpeak2 K 595.6 607.4 612.7 b −DTGmax2 c Tpeak3 %/min 2.89 6.04 9.68 K 761.7 772.3 773.7 b −DTGmax3 %/min 1.19 2.31 3.74 c Tpeak4 K 961.2 970.5 982.7 b −DTGmax4 %/min 0.60 1.15 1.77 c Tf d K 1159.4 1181.8 1194.3 Wr e wt.% 36.26 36.07 36.41 Ti, the initial decomposition temperature. Tpeak1, Tpeak2, Tpeak3, and Tpeak4 are the peak temperature of Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, and Stage 4, respectively. −DTGmax1, −DTGmax2 −DTGmax3, and −DTGmax1 are the maximum weight loss rate of Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, and Stage 4, respectively. Tf, the terminal decomposition temperature. Wr, the residual weight after PR pyrolysis. vibration can also cause characteristic absorption peaks between 3600 and 3000 cm−1. Therefore, dehydroxylation may also occur during PR pyrolysis. The absorption peak near 2920 cm−1 was caused by the stretching vibration of C–H bonds in the methyl or methylene groups. The two peaks at 1450 cm−1 and 1400 cm−1 were attributed to the in-plane bending vibration of the CeH bonds in the methyl or methylene groups. The spectra suggest the possible presence of aliphatics and alkyl aromatics in the raw PR. As the pyrolysis temperature increased, cracking of the methyl and methylene groups caused the intensities of these characteristic absorption peaks to gradually weaken and disappear. CH4 could be generated during this process. The band near 1310 cm−1 was attributed to eCOOH bonds. The absorption peak at 1230 cm−1 was associated with the stretching vibration of C-N in the amide III group. The absorption peaks from 1200 to 1000 cm−1 were related to the CeO asymmetric stretching vibrations. As the pyrolysis temperature increased, the breakage of these chemical bonds generated products such as CO, CO2 and NH3 (Chen et al., 2015). The absorption peaks in the fingerprint region (wavenumbers < 1000 cm−1) were associated with the out-of-plane bending vibration of the aromatic CeH bonds, which indicates the presence of some substituted groups in aromatics and phenolics. As the pyrolysis temperature increased, the changing trends of these characteristic adsorption peaks were consistent with those of other peaks. was similar to the theoretical master-plot An. An was a nucleationgrowth model, and the corresponding mechanism function was G(α) = [-ln(1-α)]n. Based on the above results, the value of n and pre-exponential factor A would be further determined. By inserting mechanism functions (D4, Fn and An) into Eq. (9) could obtain: G (α ) = AE 2α P (uα ) = 1 − − (1 − α )2/3 βR 3 (13) G (α ) = AE (1 − α )1 − n − 1 P (uα ) = βR n−1 (14) G (α ) = AE P (uα ) = [−ln(1 − α )]n βR (15) 2/3 was plotted against EP(uα)/βR (Fig. For stage 1, 1-2α/3-(1-α) S3(a), Supplementary data). For stage 2 and stage 4, [(1-α)1−n-1]/(n-1) was plotted against EP(uα)/βR at n = 1.0–2.0 with a step of 0.1. The highest correlation coefficient of fitting curves was found at n = 2.0 and n = 1.9, respectively (Figs. S3(b) and (c), Supplementary data). For stage 3, [-ln(1-α)]n was plotted against EP(uα)/βR at n = 1/4, 1/3, 2/5, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 4/5, 1.0, and 3/2. The highest correlation coefficient of fitting curve was found at n = 4/5 (Figs. S3(d), Supplementary data). Next, the pre-exponential factor A was obtained from the slope of the fitting curves. The kinetic triplets under heating rates of 20 K/min and 30 K/min were calculated using the same method, with the results listed in Table 4. The mechanism functions for stages 1, 2, 3, and 4 were f(α) = 3/2[(1-α) −1/3-1] −1, f(α) = (1-α)2, f(α) = 5/4(1-α)[-ln(1-α)]1/ 5 , and f(α) = (1-α)1.9, respectively. 3.3.2. FTIR analysis of gaseous products Gas products at different temperatures mainly included CH4, CO, CO2, and NH3 according to the assignments of IR bands (Yang et al., 2015; Zhang et al., 2014), which is consistent with our previous analysis in Section 3.3.1. The multiple peaks at 4000–3400 cm−1 and 2000–1200 cm−1 were related to the stretching vibrations of OeH from H2O and phenol or alcohol structure. The typical “W” peak at 2400–2250 cm−1 and relative low intensity peak at 710–610 cm−1 were assigned to CO2. The intensity of these peaks was relatively strong at 600 K and weakened sharply with the temperature increasing, indicating that dehydroxylation and decarboxylation mainly occurred at low temperatures. The CeH stretching vibrations at 3200–2800 cm−1 revealed the presence of CH4 and C2H6 in gaseous products. Besides, the absorption band at 1400–1200 cm−1 was caused by the in-plane bending vibrations of CeH in CH4. CH4 was mainly produced at high temperatures (greater than 800 K), which might be related to the cleavage of eCH3, eCH2, and benzene ring. The bands between 2250 cm−1 and 1980 cm−1 was caused by the C^O stretching vibrations, which was indicative of the existence of CO. Carbonyls and ethers decomposed to produce CO at low temperatures, and then the cracking and reforming of C-O in chars promoted the production of CO with increasing pyrolysis temperature (Hu et al., 2012; Wei et al., 2018). In addition, the PR pyrolysis also produced large quantities of N-containing gases, such as HCN (CeH stretching vibrations at 3400–3200 cm−1) and NH3 (NeH out-of-plane bending vibration at 961 cm−1 and 937 cm−1). HCNO was represented by the peak at 3.3. Characterization of pyrolysis products 3.3.1. FTIR analysis of chars The structure of PR and chars obtained at 600 K, 700 K, 800 K, 900 K, and 1000 K was characterized by FTIR spectrum. The assignments of absorption bands are based on the literatures (Zhu et al., 2016; Zhu et al., 2015). It was observed that the intensities of all characteristic peaks in the spectra grew weaker as the pyrolysis temperature increased. The FTIR spectra of the raw PR sample exhibited a broad band in the range of 3600–3000 cm−1, which can be attributed to the stretching vibration of NeH. The characteristic absorption peaks at 1640 cm−1 and 1540 cm−1 were primarily associated with C]O stretching vibrations (amide I band) and NeH in-plane bending vibrations (amide II band), respectively. This result indicates the presence of amides in the raw PR sample, which is consistent with the fact that PR contains many proteins. As the pyrolysis temperature increased, the intensities of these absorption peaks gradually decreased. This result suggests that the NeH and C]O bonds continuously cracked during the pyrolysis process, which may result in gaseous products such as CO and NH3. All these characteristic peaks disappeared above 800 K, indicating that the proteins were decomposed completely. This result could also be found in other relevant work (Wei et al., 2018). Moreover, PR also contains carboxylic acids, alcohols, and phenols. The O–H stretching 50 Bioresource Technology 277 (2019) 46–54 Z. Wang et al. %2/(K3·min2) 1.39 × 10−7 5.40 × 10−7 1.25 × 10−6 %2/(K3·min2) 6.90 × 10−9 1.96 × 10−8 4.93 × 10−8 % 17.38 17.73 16.96 β K/min E KJ/mol A min−1 f(α) Stage 1 10 20 30 10 20 30 10 20 30 10 20 30 86.01 6.726 × 109 7.025 × 109 6.869 × 109 3.407 × 1014 3.149 × 1014 4.037 × 1014 2.239 × 1013 2.477 × 1013 2.599 × 1013 2.537 × 1016 2.742 × 1016 2.611 × 1016 3/2[(1-α) Stage 3 Stage 4 167.87 201.79 309.96 R2 −1/3 -1]−1 (1-α)2 5/4(1-α)[-ln(1-α)]1/5 (1-α)1.9 0.99897 0.99908 0.99967 0.99577 0.99792 0.99924 0.99885 0.99956 0.99921 0.99947 0.99993 0.99949 around 2350 cm−1 (C]O stretching vibrations). However, this characteristic peak was covered by that of CO2, resulting in that it is difficult to identify whether HCNO existed in gaseous products from FTIR spectra. 3.3.3. GC-MS analysis of bio-oil GC-MS results showed the bio-oil is an extremely complex mixture and contains nearly 200 compounds. By comparing mass spectra with the NIST database, about 50 compounds were identified based on their chromatographic peak area that accounted for more than 3% of the total area (Table S2, Supplementary data). The bio-oil was primarily composed of hydrocarbons, nitrogen-containing species, and oxygencontaining species. The hydrocarbons included olefins and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and their content was the lowest (less than 5%). Olefins might be generated by the pyrolysis of lipids in the PR. PAHs were primarily produced by the secondary reaction of benzene derivatives such as phenol and cresol in the pyrolysis volatiles (Dai et al., 2014). The nitrogen-containing species primarily consisted of amides and amines, nitriles and N-containing heterocyclic compounds, and their content exceeded 45% due to the high protein content (45.4 wt%) in PR. Similar results were reported in previous studies on algal pyrolysis (Yu et al., 2018). The oxygen-containing species mainly consisted of alcohols, phenols, furans, ethers, and ketones, and their content was approximately 50%. These undesirable oxygenated components not only led to the instability of bio-oil during storage and transportation, but reduced its heating value. Thus, upgrading bio-oil to transportation fuel through hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) is one of important topics for the future work. Besides, the content of isosorbide in the oxygen-containing species was as high as 30%. This was probably because the polyether polyol defoamer added during the penicillin fermentation was pyrolyzed to sorbitol, which was further converted into isosorbide by dehydration (Zhang et al., 2018). Fig. 3 presents the relative peak area of the classified bio-oil compounds at different temperatures. Increasing temperature tended to increase hydrocarbon content, especially PAHs. PAHs not only reduce fuel quality but are also extremely harmful to the environment. Therefore, it is recommended to use low temperature pyrolysis or catalytic pyrolysis to reduce the formation of PAHs in bio-oil. Amines and amides in PR bio-oil were mainly generated by NH3/NH2·(due to the dimerization reactions of amino acids in PR) reacting with fatty acid (from lipids decomposition) (Chen et al., 2017). The content of these compounds decreased gradually from 13.38% to 7.95% as pyrolysis temperature increased from 600 K to 1000 K, which may be due in part to the release of most of NH3/NH2·into gaseous products. In addition, the dehydration or deamination reactions of amides were another reason for this phenomenon. Nitriles generation mainly came from the cleavage reactions of amino acids and dehydration reactions of amides. Nitriles content initially increased with pyrolysis temperature; but the value reached at the peak of 6.77% at 800 K, after which it started to d c −DTGmean1, −DTGmean2, −DTGmean3, and −DTGmean4 are the mean weight loss rate of Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, and Stage 4, respectively. (ΔT1/2)1, (ΔT1/2)2, (ΔT1/2)3, and (ΔT1/2)4 are the temperature range of (−DTGmax)/(−DTGmean) = 0.5 at Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, and Stage 4, respectively. ΔW1, ΔW2, ΔW3, and ΔW4 are the weight loss percentage of Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, and Stage 4 in the total weight loss, respectively. D1, D2, D3, and D4 are the comprehensive devolatilization index of Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, and Stage 4, respectively. b a %/min 0.49 0.97 1.37 %2/(K3·min2) 1.02 × 10−7 3.56 × 10−7 7.08 × 10−7 % 10.03 9.11 8.00 K 54.6 56.8 62.8 %/min 1.34 2.64 3.69 %2/(K3·min2) 1.90 × 10−7 7.31 × 10−7 1.68 × 10−6 % 65.85 68.23 69.63 K 163.8 160.5 159.2 %/min 2.42 4.61 6.81 %2/(K3·min2) 2.81 × 10−8 9.31 × 10−8 2.44 × 10−7 % 6.75 4.93 5.41 K 59.6 52.4 44.1 %/min 0.50 0.77 1.27 10 20 30 Stage Stage 2 K 117.7 140.6 124.8 D4d −DTGmean4a −DTGmean2a (ΔT1/2)1b −DTGmean1a K/min ΔW1c D1d (ΔT1/2)2b ΔW2c D2d −DTGmean3a (ΔT1/2)3b ΔW3c D3d (ΔT1/2)4b ΔW4c D Stage 4 Stage 3 Stage 2 Stage 1 β Table 3 Comprehensive devolatilization index D of PR pyrolysis under different heating rates. Table 4 Kinetic triplet for various stages of PR pyrolysis at different heating rates. 51 Bioresource Technology 277 (2019) 46–54 Z. Wang et al. Fig. 2. (a–d) Experimental master-plots of P(uα)/P(u0.5) vs. α for various stages of PR pyrolysis at different heating rates. (a) Stage 1, (b) Stage 2, (c) Stage 3, (d) Stage 4. (e–h) Comparison of theoretical master-plots of G(α)/G(0.5) vs. α and experimental master-plots at 10 K/min. (e) Stage 1, (f) Stage 2, (g) Stage 3, (h) Stage 4. pyrroles were mainly from the secondary cracking reactions of N-containing functional groups like pyridinic-N and pyrrolic-N in pyrolysis chars (Debono and Villot, 2015; Lorenzetti et al., 2016; Tian et al., 2014). N-heterocyclic compounds may also generate via the Maillard reaction. High N-containing compounds in bio-oil can result in nitrogen-related pollution. Therefore, the removal of nitrogen from pyrolysis oil is another point for our follow-up studies. There is no specific decrease rapidly. This was probably due to the secondary cracking reaction of nitriles, accompanying HCN release. 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Technol. 170, 325–330. Fig. 3. Product selectivity (area %) of bio-oil compounds produced from PR pyrolysis. trend for the oxygenated compounds in bio-oil with rising temperature. 4. Conclusion The thermal behaviors and product formation mechanism during PR pyrolysis were investigated. The thermal decomposition of PR proceeded in four stages, and the higher heating rate can significantly improve its pyrolysis performance. The most probable mechanism functions for various stages were f(α) = 3/2[(1-α) −1/3-1]−1, f (α) = (1-α)2, f(α) = 5/4(1-α)[-ln(1-α)]1/5, and f(α) = (1-α)1.9, respectively. FTIR results showed that the cleavage of NeH, C]O, CeH, CeN, and CeO in chars resulted in the production of CH4, CO, NH3, and HCN. The high protein content in PR resulted in a high fraction of nitrogenated compounds in bio-oil. Moreover, bio-oil also contained large quantities of oxygenated species and a few hydrocarbons. Acknowledgements This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51508553 and No. 51478160), Beijing Training Project for the Leading Talents in S&T (No. LJ201620), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Funded Project (No. 2016M591266), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. FRFTP-17-062A1). Compliance with ethical standards Conflict of interest The authors declare no conflict of interest. Ethical approval This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors. Appendix A. Supplementary data Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2019.01.030. References Alvarez, J., Lopez, G., Amutio, M., Artetxe, M., Barbarias, I., Arregi, A., Bilbao, J., Olazar, M., 2016. Characterization of the bio-oil obtained by fast pyrolysis of sewage sludge in a conical spouted bed reactor. Fuel Process. Technol. 149, 169–175. 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