Abstract
As pyrolysis is the initial step involved in thermochemical processes of biomass, understanding of the pyrolytic behavior of biomass is crucial to biomass thermochemical conversions. This work presents a new facility for studying the pyrolysis behavior of solid fuels. The experimental setup contains a thermogravimetry system connected with a home-made reflectron time-of-flight mass spectrometer via a single-stage molecular beam sampling interface, and a tunable vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) light generated from synchrotron source is used for soft photoionization. Evolution of the gaseous products of pine wood pyrolysis was examined at a heating rate of 20 degrees C/min in a nitrogen environment at atmospheric pressure. Experiments were performed at the photon energies of 10.0, 10.5 and 11.0 eV, and mass spectra of gaseous products were recorded by the time-of-flight mass analyzer every five seconds. Species with the mass range of m/z 20-220 are presented and possible formation pathways of typical products are discussed. (C) 2016 by The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc.